A Letter on Justice and Open Debate | Hacker News Reader

A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

harpers.org

214 pointstosh332 comments

Some bright spots I've noticed in the past month or so in this area, for those who care both about justice and open debate:

- John Carmack signal boosting[1] Sarah Downey's article "This PC witch-hunt is killing free speech, and we have to fight it"[2]

- The critical comments on the obligatory "BLM" post in r/askscience[3]

- Glenn Loury's response[4] to Brown University's letter to faculty/alumni about racial justice.

- The failure[5] of a group of folks to cancel Steven Pinker over accusations of racial insensitivity.

[1] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1279105937404579841

[2] https://medium.com/@sarahadowney/this-politically-correct-wi...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gvc7k9/black_li...

[4] https://www.city-journal.org/brown-university-letter-racism

[5] https://mobile.twitter.com/sapinker/status/12799365902367907...

Carmack's comment on the Cultural Revolution was strange. The greatest problem with the Cultural Revolution, its defining characteristic in most people's minds, was all the mass murder. McCarthyism or something might have been a better historical analog to what is happening, but it would have been pretty tricky to jujitsu that example into a slam against the left, or the kids today, or whatever was being attempted there.

The article he linked to was a little peculiar. As someone who's inclined to agree with the author about the First Amendment, the poorly thought out paragraph about racism - using a link to hate crime statistics to demonstrate the low numbers of "actual racists," but then making a remark like The statement “black lives matter” is easy to agree with if you’re a decent human being, which raises some questions about why we all have so many not-decent people (just indecent, not actual racists?) in our social media feeds - distracted from the overall message.

The article in question also linked to Scott Adams who recently said and I quote "If Biden is elected, there's a good chance you will be dead within the year. Republicans will be hunted." [1]

So it seems rather ironic to write an article about 'political witchhunts' using someone who is claiming that Republicans are going to be systematically hunted down and murdered. I don't think the article was written in good faith at all.

[1] https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/127830983545328435...

Is this the Scott Adams behind Dilbert? I doubt it.

Yes, hence the verified check mark, dilbert.com link in profile, Dilbert cartoon profile banner, etc.

He has come unwrapped in recent years.

In the case of "black lives matter", part of the point some people are missing is why it's necessary to force people to say something that's as obvious as the nose on our faces. We're being forced to chant a slogan. An empty slogan because of course, black lives matter. No one has ever said differently.

As far as I know, the protests did not start after the officers were charged with murder. This seems like a crucial distinction if you're going to split hairs. People need to stop saying of course we always agreed on everything, because saying it nicely doesn't soften the message that one person can define reality for another.

Did the police officers who killed George Floyd think black lives matter? Do the people changing 'blue lives matter' think that black lives matter?

They don't. Our at least, not as much as other lives.

Do police officers who killed white people think that white lives don't matter. Do people chanting black lives matter think that other lives don't?

Wrong question. Do white police officers make a habit of terrorizing law abiding white people the same way they habitually terrorize law abiding black people?

Ans: Not generally.

Is this a fact or your presumption?

Do you know any black people. As in seriously know them?

When somebody uses words like "habitually" or "generally" I expect either some statistics or any other proof that is a bit stronger than a friend of a friend told me... I haven't yet seen a proof that a majority of police officers are habitual racist harassers.

I'm taking that as a no. And suggest you get to know some black people.

One should rather not generalize a whole group of people based on experiences of a few individuals one knows. History has shown it to be a bad idea. If you want to have a debate in good faith, I suggest you provide facts not ad hominem attacks.

> but then making a remark like The statement “black lives matter” is easy to agree with if you’re a decent human being, which raises some questions about why we all have so many not-decent people (just indecent, not actual racists?) in our social media feeds - distracted from the overall message.

The objection that most have to the phrase "black lives matter" is exactly the same objection that most have to "all lives matter". That is, essentially no-one objects to the sentiment expressed in the words in and of themselves, but they are suspicious of the political motivations of those who use the slogan.

There is a relative minority of people that engage in what is called "vice-signaling". That is, they claim to object to a commonly held moral sentiment that they feel has been co-opted for a partisan political cause. I think it's probably a counter-productive strategy, but I think those people can be reasoned with if you can separate the moral sentiment from the political platform.

What is “the overall message?” Is it just the plain meaning of the words? Is the idea that we need to reform the police so they stop murdering Black people?

Or is it the New York Times’ claim that “nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery?” https://mobile.twitter.com/maragay/status/116140196616729805....

Or is it that we need to “disrupt the western-prescribed nuclear family structure,” as BLM’s website claims? https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

Or is it that “institutions of white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism” are all equivalent evils that must be “abolished,” as BLM’s DC chapter proclaims? https://fee.org/articles/is-black-lives-matter-marxist-no-an...

Or is it—as the 1619 project claims and which is now being taught in schools—the supposed historical fact that capitalism is an outgrowth of plantation slavery? https://www.city-journal.org/1619-project-conspiracy-theory

Or is it applied Marxism?

> No doubt, the organization itself was quite radical from the very beginning. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors described herself and fellow co-founder Alicia Garza as “trained Marxists” in a recently resurfaced video from 2015.

Look at how much the debate has transformed within the last month. It started out with universal condemnation of a murder committed by the police in Minnesota. Now, we are talking about tearing town statues of Abraham Lincoln: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2020/06/26/uw-... (“Students in the UW-Madison's Black student union are calling on university officials to remove the statue of the nation's 16th president.”) My high school, named after Thomas Jefferson, is thinking of renaming itself. We are debating whether the Constitution as a “pro-slavery document.”

I am pro-BLM. To me, it’s a matter of my faith, as well as my personal experience living in places like Baltimore and Philadelphia and realizing that Black people just aren’t getting a fair shake. I think people of every stripe can do something to help finish the job of reconstruction. Libertarians can pitch in to help end police abuse of minorities. Conservatives can help push forward school choice, which the majority of Black people support. Middle of the road people can agree that we need to undo the pro-confederacy monument building that happened during the KKK era.

But I also believe that our country rests on mostly admirable principles and history, and that Marxism is a recipe for suffering while capitalism is uplifting billions of people before our very eyes. I can hardly blame people who are skeptical when they are forced to chant a slogan that was coined by self-avowed Marxists. You can’t blame people for being cautious in their support of a movement that has under the same roof a majority of well-meaning people who simply want to eliminate police brutality and inequality, and a vocal minority of people who view those problems as an indictment of our entire country and it’s institutions. The far left, in characteristic fashion, has taken something most people could agree on, and pushed it further and further until normal people are forced to push back to keep society from crumbling beneath their feet. And that’s a tragedy for everyone, especially people who care about the core concept of fixing policing in America.

"They're Marxists!". You couldn't make it up. "We want peace"-America will always go down this route it seems.

Haven't you seen the amount of people that are participating in these demonstrations? Of course you're gonna find self-described "Marxists" among them. Doesn't mean that the average protestor is some sort of Stalinist relic from the 1960ths. That's just absurd.

I didn't say the average protester was a Marxist. I said exactly the opposite: BLM contains a "majority of well-meaning people who simply want to eliminate police brutality and inequality."

But several of the BLM founders are, by their own description, Marxists, and that is a very different thing from happening to "find self-described 'Marxists' among" the protesters. People with lots of different views can happen to find themselves on the same side of any issue. I do think it's different when you're talking about the founders of an organization that is the de facto figurehead of the movement.

No it's not. There's no "founders" in the sense that you are trying to present. There's no organization that you join. You're pretty obviously implying that these protests are somehow linked to Marxism, otherwise that entire posts make little sense. I realize that conservatives always want to find some "leaders" to argue with rather than accept that it's a massmovement, not some top-down movement that has some sort of charter that most must directly or indirectly accept.

There is a 501(c)(3) called the "Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation." That organization created the slogan "black lives matter." That organization has leaders. They're Marxists.

> You're pretty obviously implying that these protests are somehow linked to Marxism, otherwise that entire posts make little sense. I realize that conservatives always want to find some "leaders" to argue with rather than accept that it's a mass movement, not some top-down movement that has some sort of charter that most must directly or indirectly accept.

I am not arguing that we should discredit the narrow goals of the protestors because of the ideologies of the BLM founders. In fact, I said exactly the opposite:

> I am pro-BLM... I think people of every stripe can do something to help finish the job of reconstruction.

But that's not what we're talking about. We are talking about a very specific quote from John Carmack upthread: "the statement 'black lives matter' is easy to agree with if you’re a decent human being." It is disingenuous to the extreme to suggest that one might not reasonably be concerned about the scope of that statement.

> There is a 501(c)(3) called the "Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation." That organization created the slogan "black lives matter." That organization has leaders. They're Marxists.

So? If there's a Yellow Vests non-profit started in France that has its own charter and leaders doesn't make the yellow vest somehow within that group in any practical sense.

What's your point trying to make this Marxist connection if there's indeed just some what you call leaders with Marxist connections? I mean you're saying that you're unsure if "black lives matter" includes Marxism?

When presenting an argument that has to do with determining characteristics of a group of people (e.g., the philosophical tenets of a movement), it is fallacious to cherry-pick who is and is not a real or representative member of that group. The founders of this group are indeed members and their views cannot be hand-waved away.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Leaders and policy planks matter. Leaders guide thought and policy. Support for a movement empowers that movement’s leaders. In this case, it is empowering people who say things like “capitalism is essentially racist.” https://www.city-journal.org/how-to-be-an-antiracist. The vast majority of protestors may not agree, but it’s the leaders that are giving speeches and writing the books that are included in reading lists and school curriculums.

These people make concrete conjectures, such as "the capital gains tax preference" (which is nearly universal in the developed world and widely supported by economists) "is racist." And they make concrete policy proposals, such as the following (remember the author has previously defined the capital gains preference to be racist):

> [The anti-racist amendment] would establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has fewer than 20 chapters.[1] They lead a small part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Ibram X. Kendi doesn't lead the organization or the movement as far as I can tell.

[1] https://blacklivesmatter.com/chapters/

The organization didn't create the slogan. The people who created the slogan created the organization 3 years later.[1]

[1] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jun/17/candace-ow...

The founders of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation are Marxists in much the same way that the founders of the United States were slavery advocates. That is, both statements are true, but somewhat incidental to the core idea.

If you reject the thought that the United States has slavery built deeply into its ideology, then you should award that same consideration to BLM and admit that the fundamentals of its ideology are not Marxism etc., but that Black people are fundamentally not given a fair shake by society, as you say.

This is leaving aside the point other posters have made, which is that Black Lives Matter as a slogan and idea exists outside this specific foundation. I don't think you can reasonably expect someone asserting "Black Lives Matter" to have made a complete study of this specific foundation and be in agreement with all its aims.

>that has under the same roof a majority of well-meaning people who simply want to eliminate police brutality and inequality, and a vocal minority of people who view those problems as an indictment of our entire country and it’s institutions

I think that's a false dichotomy; there's plenty of amazing Marxist literature, academic journals, etc. from well-meaning people. It's one thing to say that Marxists are misguided, but it's another thing to describe them in a situation as if they're against well-meaning moderates. It's possible for everyone to be well-meaning, and rather than assuming malice, perhaps it's a better idea to examine their point of view and arguments. I know I've taken the time to do that with right-libertarians and right-wingers online a few times.

Why do these intelligent people (tenured philosophers, sociologists, political scientists, even economists) think Marxism isn't a recipe for suffering? What do they have to say about capitalism, its advantages, and disadvantages? It's worth asking them and reading their modern point of views, which in the past fifteen years have changed a great deal already.

It is a dichotomy: you either believe that police brutality and inequality can be fixed within the basic structure of our society and economy, or you don't.

I'm a regular reader of Jacobin, so I have some idea of what modern Marxists think. (Though I won't say I'm well read on the subject.) But that's besides the point--I have no objection to Marxists participating in solving police brutality and inequality. I'm addressing the practice of socially coercing people to say "black lives matter." What ideas are you actually asking people to endorse? I think many, many people are happy to endorse that idea insofar as it means "the police shouldn't murder black people because of the color of their skin," or "black people shouldn't get the short end of the economic stick."

But the eponymous organization behind the slogan happens to be led by Marxists and has a Marxist and anti-Western platform. I think people are quite reasonably hesitant that what they're actually being asked to endorse is the platform and ideology of the organization. And I think it's perverse to insist on such endorsement under the banner of anti-racism.

I don't read Jacobin and find American socialism tiresome and unmoored from reality. But the "What We Believe" statement you cited earlier espouses none of the economic justice positions of Jacobin or the DSA, nor do either of their petitions.

There is a strain of socialist activism in BLM (you saw it with the ridiculous "property crime isn't violence" stuff). But those were voices in a larger crowd, and the movement doesn't seem to endorse them explicitly.

There are BLM signs all over Oak Park and, I assure you, very few of these people actually want to defund the Oak Park Police Department. I think BLM supporters have more clarity on the issues than you give them credit for: they're standing in solidarity with black people who have been targeted for generations by a policing culture we all know to be fucked up. They're not looking to seize the means of production.

> I'm addressing the practice of socially coercing people to say "black lives matter." What ideas are you actually asking people to endorse? I think many, many people are happy to endorse that idea insofar as it means "the police shouldn't murder black people because of the color of their skin," or "black people shouldn't get the short end of the economic stick."

I think you're quite severely overestimating both the number of people who are asking others to endorse Marxism when pressuring them to support their side in the current moment, and more to the point, the number of people who perceive themselves as being pressured to endorse Marxism in the current moment. There is some tangible benefit to both the far left and to the right for there to be a perception that that is what is going on, but I'm just not seeing it much IRL.

My extended social circle might not be representative of anything, but people are talking about cops murdering people, the behavior and misbehavior of protesters, whether vandalism during a protest is bad or somehow actually good for some reason (sigh), whether protesters deserve to suffer brutality at the hands of police (double sigh), whether racism is even a thing and whether whites are the REAL victims of racism (facepalm), whether events that are happening and are clearly documented on widely distributed video are really happening or whether that's just what "they" want us to think, and some other crazy stuff that I bet would sound familiar to you as well.

I think I'd actually feel a lot better about things if I were witnessing an argument about fringe political beliefs coming to the fore, rather than finding out how many people I know are overtly or covertly racist. That sounds a little negative but some demonstrably good things are happening as well, so... you take the bad with the good, I guess.

Parent poster was not talking about people who are merely being asked "to support their side in the current moment"; their concern was specifically wrt. the slogan/hashtag "Black Lives Matter", which is associated with a radical Marxist organization. One can care about Black lives and even demonstrate that they care without endorsing a harmful slogan.

> I think I'd actually feel a lot better about things if I were witnessing an argument about fringe political beliefs coming to the fore, rather than finding out how many people I know are overtly or covertly racist.

That makes sense, but it's also sensible to ask whether hijacking a much-needed conversation about race and police brutality to push fringe, Marxist-inspired political views helps people and institutions become less racist. It's not even clear that 'Black Lives Matter', as an overtly organized and led social movement, is doing all that much to meaningfully improve Black lives.

> Parent poster was not talking about people who are merely being asked "to support their side in the current moment"; their concern was specifically wrt. the slogan/hashtag "Black Lives Matter", which is associated with a radical Marxist organization. One can care about Black lives and even demonstrate that they care without endorsing a harmful slogan.

The parent poster described himself in another comment as pro-BLM (his phrase), and I think he was making some slightly more subtle points.

> there's plenty of amazing Marxist literature, academic journals, etc. from well-meaning people.

Road to hell is paved with good intentions, clearly. Having grown up in the Soviet Union, I want absolutely no part of that shit here in the US. None whatsoever, "well meaning" or not

> What is “the overall message?” Is it just the plain meaning of the words? Is the idea that we need to reform the police so they stop murdering Black people?

The overall message (the theme, if you prefer) of Sarah Downey's article that Carmack linked to was a defense of freedom of speech. I thought the stuff she wrote about racism was flawed enough - to be charitable, perhaps it was flawed because it wasn't the main topic of the piece and it wasn't getting sufficient space - that it took away from a potentially strong defense of freedom of speech.

> The far left, in characteristic fashion, has taken something most people could agree on, and pushed it further and further until normal people are forced to push back to keep society from crumbling beneath their feet.

That is a humorous image and it is an accurate summary of some people's thinking, but I don't know quite what to say about it without giving it more credence than I believe it deserves. If we side with the Marxists in opposing the murder of innocent people we will be living in a Communist state by Thursday is not a train of thought I would have a lot of sympathy for, even if Marxism were a force in American politics.

>It started out with universal condemnation of a murder committed by the police in Minnesota

This is revisionist, though, isn't it? And in a way that specifically eliminates the meaning of the protests. The protests started before the officers were charged, I believe. And while it may not be reasonable to expect the arrests to happen instantly, it's also reasonable that people doubted it would happen at all.

Assuming you mean well and all, this specific wording could nevertheless be interpreted as a dog whistle. It triggers some peoples' political immune system.

ELI5: What is the dog whistle in the quoted sentence? And how is it a dog whistle?

"started out...universal"

Those two words seem to express what I think is a crucial falsehood, and it works for selective communication (dog whistling) if some people get cognitive dissonance for it and others don't. We have me as an example of the former and you as an example of the latter.

I'm not saying it's intentional, but it raises hackles for me.

I'm still not seeing it. What's the crucial falsehood? Why does it give you cognitive dissonance?

Floyd was killed on Monday. According to the Wikipedia page on the protests, they began the following day, escalated to riots and burning a police station down. Chauvin was arrested on Friday.

So it is not true that everyone agreed from the beginning as it took a week to get to the point where everyone went "oh shit this is serious".

I think it's fair to say that there was almost universal condemnation from day one, from just about everyone except the Minneapolis city government. And so the protests started out as a demand for justice from Minneapolis. They later transformed into a wider protest against police violence generally.

I happened to read a story today about someone arrested for punching a police dog in Houston. It took one day for them to be charged, and that was because they went to the hospital first.

(Moved up in the thread)

I wish you wouldn't respond to my comment and only engage with what I quoted. Why not reply to the parent?

Indentation adjusted.

> Assuming you mean well and all, this specific wording could nevertheless be interpreted as a dog whistle. It triggers some peoples' political immune system.

It never occurred to me that that rayiner might have been using some kind of dog whistle in his reply to me. It would be rather out of character, and yours seems like a needlessly uncharitable interpretation of his comment.

That's why I used the qualifiers and suggested it was unintentional, in order to scrupulously follow HN guidelines. No response seems forthcoming.

Or is it that we need to “disrupt the western-prescribed nuclear family structure,” as BLM’s website claims? https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

Why is this problematic for you? They're not saying children don't need caregivers, or that families are bad. They're saying the American nuclear family has downsides compared to other models, notably the extended family model common in African and Asian cultures. What makes a nuclear family "nuclear" is that it's self-contained; it's practically by definition not intergenerational, the way many effective non-American families are. It's an especially resonant point given the amount of effort American culture put into making sure black nuclear families couldn't succeed.

I feel like criticism of the American nuclear family has been pretty much fair game for decades; it's not like BLM invented that concern.

> I feel like criticism of the American nuclear family has been pretty much fair game for decades; it's not like BLM invented that concern.

Question: can you see how mixing this into BLM is a problem? I can take an unpaid day off to protest police brutality but this very quickly escalated into something completely different.

FTR, my stance on this:

- I'm not happy to support anything that wants to remove police. More training: yes. Tougher penalties for people abusing police power: yes. But removing one of most effective stabilizers in the society: no. For all its warts, the police is important.

- While I grew up in the same house as my grandparents until I was 6 or so and while my mothers parents and other relatives walked freely in and out of the house as long as they could walk I do not want to support a movement that had any opinion on how I or anyone organize our family life

- I'm kind of a socialist at heart but sadly could never vote that way as a every socialist party around here pulls in ugly dependencies, so for now and for the foreseeable future, the second best option: support anyone who wants to leave people alone.

- As this movement had started to try to tear down Churchill - not the bravest ot noblest man - but arguably one of those whose actions mattered most to reduce police brutality (Gestapo) and racism in Europe and no one is stopping them I've concluded that this movement is beyond repair. (Anyone should feel free to prove me wrong here by turning that movement around.)

Edit:

- some clarification

- also, based on the feedback so far: am I misunderstanding something (I had a misunderstanding a few days ago where someone meant nazi but used an euphemisms that I didn't catch in that context.)

> I do not want to support a movement that had any opinion on how I or anyone organize our family life

You belong to a culture and a nation which already enforces strong opinions on how its members organize our family lives. Therefore, it's a fair question to ask how effective those opinions are, and whether different opinions might be more effective.

> You belong to a culture and a nation which already enforces strong opinions on how its members organize our family lives.

Can you explain?

(My understanding is that my nation cares less about how people organize their lives than it has done for at least 900 years.

People live together 3 generations, other live as single, others as unmarried couples, married couples and everything in between.)

In case you missed it, tptacek tackled this point:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23781397

"They're saying the American nuclear family"

Not the 'American' -> 'Western'. And that's just way of making the 'family' consistent with 'Colonialism' and 'White People' because it suits their bigotry. The nuclear family is pretty closely similar around the world, outside of mostly aboriginal communities. Obviously it's somewhat different in different places, with multi-generations under the same roof.

I view this as fundamentally antagonistic - it's 'making stuff up' to find supposedly powerful and inspiring words, 'defining the enemy' ever more as 'White People'.

It defines their struggle as not one to 'finish school and gain competence' but as merely against the forces of 'White people'.

Of course by most objective measures, nuclear families are good for society.

This is the inherent problem when we mix radicalism with 'good intentions' - they end up mestastisizing the 'grain of truth' (ie racism exists) into everything (ie everything is racist).

No, pretty much none of this is true. The English/American model of isolated "nuclear" families isn't even the norm throughout Europe (see, for instance, Italy), let alone throughout the world. I decline to take the rest of the argument you're making seriously, since your foundational premise isn't even accurate. Anything else I'd say would just be restating my previous comment.

Having lived quite long enough on the Continent (in multiple continental countries) to know otherwise, this is obviously not true.

At very least English families have more in common with German families than German families do with Italian or Spanish families.

But it's moot: because family structure across civility is not fundamentally different with respect to the antagonising view of BLM.

Aside from some degree of intergenerational cohabitation, it's not that different in advanced countries.

The BLM statement with respect to family is unfounded bigotry, specifically created to concretise and define the image of their enemy.

It's very similar to Trump specifically trying to use the term 'Wuhan Virus' so as to invoke 'blame' for the virus on China. There is a 'kernel of truth' to complicity in China - in that China did some very bad things during the early phase of the pandemic, but that doesn't justify the use of this kind of language to blame them for the entirety of the problem. The language he uses here is to provoke - and to shift blame for the inadequacies of his own system, using crude language mapped onto an external group. When in doubt, use xenophobia.

BLM attacking the 'Western Family Unit' is shifting the narrative and denying any responsibility for a very foundational problem within the community - and that is >50% of Black children have little no relationship with at least one of their parents, and that rates are about double for Black families as they are for other groups [1]. Now - obviously it's a very complicated problem (i.e. incarceration etc.), but it's a lot easier to dismiss if you don't have to see it as a problem, rather, merely an oppressive measure by your villainous opponents.

The argument "The Black community has challenges at least partly due to the deep fragmentation of the family unit" can simply be dismissed and ignored with the radical, and ironically xenophobic statement: "The family unit is colonialist and racist".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_family_struct...

Edits, ahh you confuse the western family as being just a non extended family.

The criticism is against all families, extended or not. The idea from Marxism is that tribalism starts in the family unit. The aim is to get the village to raise the child, not just allow the grandmother to lend a hand.

The western family includes the European models, it doesn't only contain the Protestant isolated family structure.

Your question should therefore be re written as "why does advocating for having a family to be made up of people not related to the child be seen as problematic"?

What has it to do with racism though?

What is the other extended familiy model? family clans? What would be the practical difference? Are the no disadvantages?

Exactly these political issues, which I have no strong opinion on, are randomly added to issues of police violence that makes the whole movement look very dishonest.

Where in the western world are people that tell you how to structure your family?

The American nuclear family was supported by the state, notably through housing policy; for instance, the best neighborhoods in the country have "single family zoning", which literally prohibit extended families in suburban neighborhoods. In fact: even after redlining, which persisted in many forms into our own lifetimes, many areas are still single-family zoned. These zoning ordinances are all turn-of-the-20th-century racist devices.

The movement isn't dishonest. Its critics are simply ignorant. That's not surprising; they've been kept in ignorance deliberately.

Of course better off people prefer these areas to high density housing. Even better off people might get into gated communities, which could be called extended family just as well. And this is a far worse situation.

Yes, the suburban happy family living the American dream might be a touch too idealistic, harsh building regulation might drive prices which disadvantages poor demographics and there were maybe people that used it for racist purposes. Doesn't mean everyone did. And high density housing is probably a lot more stressful even without a family apart from the most expensive options available.

You're not responding to what I'm saying, you're responding to what you wished I said. In reality, what I said was that municipalities enacted laws, specifically targeting black families during an era of proud and overt segregation, designed to make it difficult for extended families to move into white neighborhoods.

There is a long case history involving these ordinances, including extensive documentary evidence that occupancy caps and definitions of "immediate family" were designed specifically to exclude blacks (in the first half of the 20th century) and latinos as well (in the second), taking advantage of both the fact that black and latino households are far more likely to include grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and also the (obvious, in retrospect) fact that municipalities simply don't enforce these regulations against white households --- again, a fact documented in the case history.

At any rate, the dispute upthread suggested that there was no racial justice aspect to the "Western-prescribed nuclear family", and whether you agree with the courts or not, there clearly is such an aspect; the allegation that BLM is exceeding its charter by railing against "nuclear families" is easily refuted, and we should have all known better than to raise this objection in the first place.

This is really interesting info tptacek. Yet another type of systemic oppression and just intriguing recent history that was not something I was exposed to a few years ago.

In history at what point? I think you have been lied to if think these issues are connected to racism. It isn't a lens for everything. The civil rights movement wasn't that long ago, so the discrimination is expected. Doesn't mean it applies to the current housing market that discriminates against poor people in general.

It started out with universal condemnation of a murder committed by the police in Minnesota.

And it's become a distraction from that. The US has a serious problem with police brutality and quality control. US cops killed 1,112 people in 2019. That's over 10x the rate for EU countries. The odds are worse if you're black, but more whites are killed by cops than blacks.

That's the problem. Statues don't kill. Flags don't kill. Cops kill.

Yea... but let’s dive into the statistics. 1,200 deaths from cops - some unknown number justified (a shootout or whatever) and quite literally millions or tens of millions of interactions.

I think we need police reform. As a military veteran I think there is no reason that an MRAP should be on American streets, but I also think the police have pretty large responsibilities and need more training too.

We also (and I’ll say that I am a 2nd Amendment proponent - within reason) have police who have to enter into situations where the other person may be armed, which adds to the stress level.

Frankly, if you look at the stats I’m not even sure we have a police brutality problem; instead we have more of a police abuse of power problem.

Solutions that come to mind:

More training

More pay

More strict hiring requirements

Abolition of police unions

Requiring police to carry insurance

No-hire once fired or terminated from a department (generally but there are specifics here to be discussed)

Sell off and no more spending on war equipment (MRAPs, assault rifles, smoke grenades, whatever)

Mandatory body cams, lack of use results in immediate suspension without pay while an investigation takes place, and if the camera is intentionally turned off immediate termination and no ability to be rehired anywhere in the country

That’s what I would start with

Police reform stopped during the current administration as the Department of Justice backed off from enforcing various court orders on some truly inept police departments. It will probably start up shortly after the current administration departs. How well it will be done remains to be seen.

Interesting it just stopped during this administration after not having been 100% fixed in previous ones.

There is no "100% fixed", only forward progress or regression. Forward progress was being made before the current administration; forward progress was stopped during this administration.

That’s such a vague characterization that I don’t even want to bother finding out what the person who says it thinks “progress” is.

> no reason that an MRAP should be on American streets

It's not _on_ American streets. I lived in the US for 20 years and I've never seen one. Likely some SWAT teams purchased them for pennies on the dollar, but I'd argue SWAT teams need them, to reduce casualties when getting close to violent action.

> assault rifles

To the best of my knowledge assault rifles are not in use by US police. AR15 is not an assault rifle.

I saw plenty in London though.

But that's nuance - people younger than, say, 35, won't understand any of it. Literally nobody is interested in the actual reform at the moment. If they were, we'd see some serious proposals by now.

> But that's nuance - people younger than, say, 35, won't understand any of it.

Check yourself, pot, that's an awfully broad brush to be calling a kettle incapable of nuance with.

> AR15 is not an assault rifle

Means you don't know what and assault riffle is.

Assault rifles have selective fire (i.e. they can fire multiple bullets with each pull of the trigger). An AR15 is semi-automatic, which means only one bullet for each pull of the trigger.

Assault weapons are light weight short barrelled rifles designed to be used in close quarters. That's it.

That is a carbine. Actual assault rifles have selective fire and are heavily regulated.

You spouting politically motivated revisionism here. You can do that but I'm not signing up.

The terms I am using are defined pretty clearly on Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbine

You may be confusing "assault rifle" and "assault weapon" which are different categories. The AR15 does usually qualify as an "assault weapon". The definition of assault weapon is looser, and includes a number of features (such as barrel shrouds and flash suppressors") the sole purpose of which is to make the gun safer to use, and have nothing to do with making them actually more dangerous.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon

If you have different sources, feel free so share.

Assault weapon != assault rifle. Former is a generic term w/o commonly agreed definition, latter is a rifle with the characteristics the GP listed, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle

Is there anything in the definition of assault weapon that has to do with a shorter barrel though? I'm genuinely curious where this person came to the conclusion that it was relevant.

Probably some local law? There are 50 states and much more cities, every one of them can have an "Assault Weapon" legislation with whatever definition they want, starting from the color and ending with the "shoulder thing that goes up".

Also, barrel length is one of the most common theme in firearms bans. Usually those consist of legal limits on the minimum barrel length in an effort to prevent people from concealing it, I guess.

There's a whole host of tasks given to the police that they're completely unsuitable for. People keep getting shot when armed police attend wellness checks. Same with traffic stops. A lot of police interactions are with homeless, mentally ill people and/or addicts in need of care, not a damned bullet. The rare cases of active shooters do justify an armed response, but let's be honest, cops rarely respond quickly enough to make a difference in many of those situations.

> US cops killed 1,112 people in 2019.

You probably already know this, but that number is a bit of a guess and almost certainly on the low side, since local police aren't required to report these numbers to the public or to any central authority.

"That's the problem. Statues don't kill. Flags don't kill. Cops kill."

And Americans shoot at each other and Cops at a rate >10x than Europe.

The misrepresentation in your comment, is that it doesn't account for the differing conditions the cops face.

'Cops kill' -> 'People who shoot at cops get killed'.

This isn't to say police violence is not a problem, but it's misrepresented by all of this narrative.

If Americans were not carrying guns everywhere, this would be an entirely different conversation.

Most of the US, including the most heavily armed parts, have the homicide rate of Switzerland.

Yes, thanks for pointing that out (fyi interesting example because Switzerland has a lot of guns per capita) - but the general widespread availability of weapons makes them very accessible, both legally and illegally, in specific locations wherein people are going to use them for 'bad things'.

Also - that the vast majority of gun owners are 'very responsible' doesn't change the fact that as cops pull people over, there is a reasonable likelihood people will have weapons, which ratchets up the likelihood that someone, even in a 'good area' will do something bad. The likelihood is small, but enough to make a difference.

When I've been pulled over in the US, often the officer approaches and doesn't quite come to the side of the window, remains slightly out of sight, they might have one hand on the flashlight and seem to be quite concerned about visually inspecting inside the car as a precaution. In Canada, I don't really see this. I believe this is a function of the likelihood of weapons.

Also, America differs in citizens likelihood of doing something pretty outrageous when confronted with police. I'm not sure why this is, I guess a cultural attribute - but again, combine this with weapons, and it makes policing materially more dangerous.

Here's the data on high-speed chases in the US [1] and a 'high point' for high speed chases in the UK as a comparison. [2]

Here are the number of US police killed in the line of duty [3], it's quite a lot, and the number of UK police killed [4] (it amounts to about 1 per year).

A lot of guns, a propensity for more violent acts, I think really does shift the equilibrium.

Which doesn't justify excess violence by cops of course, but it's a different context.

[1] https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5906

[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/05/police-pursuit-d...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36748136

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_police_officer...

> Yes, thanks for pointing that out (fyi interesting example because Switzerland has a lot of guns per capita)

Indeed, the choice was intentional.

> but the general widespread availability of weapons makes them very accessible, both legally and illegally, in specific locations wherein people are going to use them for 'bad things'.

While I don't think the problems of those specific locations should be ignored, their problems are also not a good justification to abridge the rights of people who live outside of those places.

> Also - that the vast majority of gun owners are 'very responsible' doesn't change the fact that as cops pull people over, there is a reasonable likelihood people will have weapons, which ratchets up the likelihood that someone, even in a 'good area' will do something bad. The likelihood is small, but enough to make a difference.

The impact of civilian gun ownership on police interactions is not something I've given much thought, and is worth exploring.

However, I will note that there are many sheriffs across the U.S. which actually encourage their county residents to own guns. There are many, many legitimate defensive guns uses each year.

>The greatest problem with the Cultural Revolution, its defining characteristic in most people's minds, was all the mass murder.

I'm not sure that's true. Stipulating that it was "the greatest problem", how could it be the defining characteristic considering all the other historical instances of mass murder?

You should be sure.

Violence and extreme social distress, public humiliation sessions, public beatings were meted out rather liberally. A specifically pernicious aspect of Mao's strategam was turning generation against generation. These are the defining characteristics of Chinese Communist Party's Cultural Revolution.

I was practicing understatement. I think my general level of ignorance of the cultural revolution is pretty average (I'm going to read some books on it) and I didn't think of it being defined by "mass murder", but rather the things you list and italicize. Even if you had disagreed, I was characterizing popular mostly ignorant opinion based on my own, not the true nature of the period.

The public humiliation sessions are what I think most people that didn't study it think of, combined with the violence. They're what I vaguely think of; they're what you mention, and I'm confident they're what most people think of. The concept of such sessions is something that found its way into Western fiction (e.g. 80s SF) clearly inspired by the historical period. I don't recall a specific example, but this is something I always assumed was part of popular culture at some level.

While we're on that topic (popular impressions of Chinese history), a lot of people died during the "Great Leap Forward" too, but again, I don't think the average uninformed opinion of what defines it is "mass murder". When I think of that, I think of peasants trying to make steel and other social disruption.

All historical instances of mass murder were wrong. It's a key delineation. BLM is a response to mass incarceration and disproportionate killings by the legal system. Notably, they don't seem interested in crossing the line into mass killings; they want less killings. Thus, the jump to Maoism from Marxism is overwrought.

Was my meaning actually unclear to you? There have been plenty of times of censorship and social strife in history. Choosing one that involved the murder of tens of thousands of people makes for an especially poor analogy to what's happening today.

The Cultural Revolution is a poor analog in other ways as well (I mean, upon examination the comparison to our current moment doesn't hold up at all and it's boring to discuss) but the large number of dead people seems like an especially important indicator that perhaps what's happening today is not as serious as all that, and that the author is engaging in some pretty extreme hyperbole. (which is their right of course, blah blah)

> There have been plenty of times of censorship and social strife in history.

Sure, but the notions of "re-education", "self-criticism" and the struggle-session as a form of public humiliation where someone is forced to admit their "crimes" before the "people" are a distinctive part of leftist social strife and oppression. And it seems quite relevant to point out that these social practices have led to mass murder in at least one instance that we know about, where they were promoted in an extensive "grassroots" campaign and thereby became widespread. We're not talking about willful and intentional physical purges of intellectuals ala Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, where your contention that mass murder is the defining element of it all would be far more on point.

Forced recantations and blacklisting are not new things or something that require strained analogies to Chinese history. In my view shouting "hey, look over there! A slippery slope! We'd better watch out!" takes away from a more serious message about how we are currently repeating our own, very serious, mistakes of the past. (although to be sure, there are some genuinely new aspects of how things are playing out in social media)

>- John Carmack signal boosting[1] Sarah Downey's article "This PC witch-hunt is killing free speech, and we have to fight it"[2]

Is this really a "bright spot"? Expressing a fear (without any reasoning or evidence shown as the basis for that fear) that one's opponents approve of an atrocious campaign orchestrated by a totalitarian regime?

There's a lot of room to criticize "cancel culture" and deplatforming. Comparisons with mass killings and state-orchestrated oppression is an odd choice, and (to take the other side of the fence here) with about the same amount of merit as saying that people critical of BLM have similar opinions of the Nazi regime.

There is a direct line of descent between Maoist agitation in Western countries throughout the late-1960s and 1970s and the current radical left. They have explicitly approved of the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" in the past - often enthusiastically so - and for all we know, they continue to do so. The M.O. is certainly comparable.

That's the kind of sweeping claim that really needs to be sourced.

>There is a direct line of descent between Maoist agitation in Western countries throughout the late-1960s and 1970s and the current radical left.

Do you have any sources I can read on this? If anything, it seems the radical left actually left Badiou and his ilk behind for the Frankfurt School, and even then, I'm doubtful as to what that intellectual heritage means to your average "radical leftist" today. This is all beside the point, however - is there a recent (from the past 20 years) poll or anything similar surveying the "radical left" (which, mind you, includes anti-statists and anarcho-Communists) on their opinion of the Cultural Revolution? One of the largest "radical leftist" groups in the West is Antifa, but from what I know, it's hard to see any Maoism (or Maoist ideas) present in its members[0]. The Sino-Soviet split and the ascension of Deng liberalizing China has practically deadened Maoist ideology in the West. You'd have a better (but still somewhat shaky) case to say the radical left today draws from Stalinism instead (as opposed to Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, etc.).

>They have approved of the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" in the past

To what degree? In what numbers? For example, I can't name a single leftist journal which the majority of contributors could be aligned with Maoist views, never mind views supporting the Cultural Revolution. Even the Maoists I know of with some influence (e.g. Badiou) are critical of the cultural revolution.

>and for all we know, they continue to do so

So it's a superstition?

>The M.O. is certainly similar.

Which mainstream leftist organizations (mainstream enough to guide the course of the modern "radical left") approve of state-sanctioned murder and imprisonment of intellectuals?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)#Ideolog...

> One of the largest "radical leftist" groups in the West is Antifa, but from what I know, it's hard to see any Maoism (or Maoist ideas) present in its members

"The modern Antifa movement has its roots in the West German Außerparlamentarische Opposition left-wing student movement ... The first Antifa groups in this tradition were founded by the Maoist Communist League in the early 1970s. From the late 1980s, West Germany's squatter scene and left-wing autonomism movement were the main contributors to the new Antifa movement ..."

The reference to "autonomism" implies a historical link to "revolutionary spontaneism" groups who, generally speaking, were especially enthusiastic about Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (that is, Mao Zedong Thought as "transferred" to the Western context) and the CR in particular. It might be hard to believe, but the links are quite clear once you do some digging.

> The Sino-Soviet split and the ascension of Deng liberalizing China has practically deadened Maoist ideology in the West.

Maybe so in the United States, but it did not have the same outcome elsewhere in the West. (And the real turning point was Nixon going to China, that made overt references to Maoist China somewhat unpalatable for radicals in the U.S. and to some extent the UK. Changes in deeper ideology are not nearly as easy or quick, however.)

You're again using a historical example to characterize the extent of the current sway of a particular intellectual heritage, and a tenuous one at that: autonomism does not imply revolutionary spontaneism at all (again, evidence please!), and it is rather closer associated with left-communism, a historical and current communist movement best associated with early Lenin and a return to Marx, rejecting Stalinism and Maoism. Operaismo/workerism and later autonomism rejected Third-Worldism, even in a time when it was popular.

"The plight of Trotskyism had been even more bleak, reduced to eking out a semi-clandestine existence within the PCI. Neither of these fates par-ticularly appealed to the editors of Classe Operaia; nor, for that matter, did they show any great interest in the first murmurings of Italian Maoism. Their reasons for such diffidence, beyond the vagaries of sectarian politiCS, were rational enough, being based on the realisation that a new organisation unable to command the support of a large slice of the working class was doomed to failure. This lesson, moreover, had been reinforced for the Venetians by their unsuccessful attempts to build workplace committees outside the offiCial labour movement, a failure that led them temporarily to advance a more cautious approach to autonomous organisation. Both the Northerners and Romans, then, were initially united in rejecting what they called 'Trotskyist tactics' and 'Chinese dances' (Tronti 1966: 32), even if their motives for doing so were rather different." (from Storming Heaven by Steve Wright[0]).

You're going to need a stronger case than saying that the West German movement was Maoist and therefore Antifa in the US and elsewhere today is Maoist too - especially when you contradict your own claim that by the 1980s they'd moved on to autonomism. Please provide an analysis of the prevalence of Maoism or Maoist ideas as it exists today within the mainstream American radical left.

[0] https://libcom.org/files/Wright%20S%20-%20Storming%20Heaven%...

Source?

There is a direct line of descent between the Nazi government in Germany and the current space efforts, too.

Maybe it's not direct yet. And that's what makes me a little nervous about where this all could head.

If people are willing to hunt and cancel people without giving the accused a chance to even defend themselves (leading to reputation, job loss, etc), physical harm seems like the next logical step.

Meanwhile, protestors are now routinely being run over by actual physical automobiles driven by right-wing terrorists (https://www.npr.org/2020/06/21/880963592/vehicle-attacks-ris...). But sure, the hypothetical harm done at some future date by progressive-minded folks is far more concerning.

This sounds terrible. Can you provide some recent sources including proof of the drivers motivations?

The last American 1970s Maoist I met (ca. 2005) was by then an investment manager. There are Marxists nostalgists out there, but not many. The left is much more into identity politics these days.

> Comparisons with mass killings and state-orchestrated oppression is an odd choice,

Coordinated attempts to ruin peoples ability to earn a living is pretty bad. It also strikes me that such economic terrorism could very well be the precursors to actual killing and state oppression. People who don't respect the right to liberty or property of others probably don't respect their right to life either.

> with about the same amount of merit as saying that people critical of BLM have similar opinions of the Nazi regime.

I agree with the point that our criticism needs to have some proportionality, but I don't think this particular comparison is entirely valid. In both the Cultural Revolution and the current Cancel Culture, the objective is the purging institutions of dissidents and the destruction of all artifacts of the old order (e.g. destruction of statues, including Frederick Douglass for some reason). Whatever the people participating in Cancel Culture believe, they are still following the Cultural Revolution template. Obviously the Cultural Revolution was far more violent, but I think that assuming such mass violence can't or won't happen here is mistaken.

On the other hand, there are plenty of critics of BLM who are quite ardently against abusive policing, but either don't think the racial component is as central to the problem of authoritarian policing as BLM claims, or object to some of the other principles of BLM that have nothing to do with race or policing.

> It also strikes me that such economic terrorism could very well be the precursors to actual killing and state oppression.

They could also not be. Even the phrasing of "economic terrorism" stretches both the terminology of economy and terrorism beyond what most people would consider by the terms.

> People who don't respect the right to liberty or property of others probably don't respect their right to life either.

Which of the 'cancel culture' advocates don't respect the right to liberty? I can understand they have arguments against the right to (private) property, but this seems far more abstract.

>the objective is the purging institutions of dissidents and the destruction of all artifacts of the old order

I have some recollection of Marcuse's argument that the qualitative, historical, and social differences between terrors and movements are increasingly being reduced to nothing by the popular consciousness who is only acquainted with them through one-off facts and cherry picking...

>Whatever the people participating in Cancel Culture believe, they are still following the Cultural Revolution template.

What is sufficient to constitute a 'template' here? Let me provide a concrete example; the anarchists of old frequently argued against the notion of human rights, the state, and property. Marx and his followers did the same. Who is following who's template here? As another commenter in this thread pointed out, when most people think of the cultural revolution, they're really not thinking about tearing down statues or call-outs on social media (or even newspapers!) from a mob only given power by association (and not, say, the state or weaponry).

The comparison is almost entirely bunk, and it's a little surprising that Mao's atrocities are being reduced to tearing down statues of slave traders. BLM actually more closely resembles (again, I'm ignoring many qualitative differences here, since it seems to be fair game to do so in this discussion) the systematic removal of Marx and Lenin statues in Europe and especially Lukacs' and Engels' statues being removed recently.

> Even the phrasing of "economic terrorism" stretches both the terminology of economy and terrorism beyond what most people would consider by the terms.

The literal firing of some nobody over accidentally making a gesture that looked like a "white power" symbol fits very nicely into the idea of "economic terrorism"[1]. The idea that anything you do in your life could be captured, taken out of context, and shared on the Internet and subject to the fury of a mob (and resulting in the loss of income, employability, and economic stability) is pretty terrifying.

What makes it terrorism is not simply that people are subjected to this treatment randomly (although that does happen too, and should not be discounted) but that there is an ideological agenda behind these attacks. The person who posted the picture from the linked article, those who shared it, and possibly even the company that fired him (though they could have just been cowards) all felt that they were contributing toward a righteous cause of fighting against bigotry.

Of course, even if the gesture was genuine the idea that bigots should not be able to even get jobs as repair technicians (assuming that they otherwise conduct themselves in a lawful manner) is baffling to me. There's no justice in going after people who are already relatively low on the social and economic hierarchy just because the believe repugnant things.

[1]https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-ove...

The Sarah Downey article you mention is of really low quality.

She parrots tired cliches (you couldn't make Blazing Saddles today!) in a world where we're realizing that many beloved comedians are sexual predators as well.

She thinks JK Rowling did nothing wrong, she only followed the science! (no mention that she explicitly accuses transwomen of being a danger to ciswomen, she thinks trans rights are brainwashing teenagers into wanting to change their gender, and has a few other obviously transphobic and harmful calls to action).

She accuses the people calling for lockdowns and isolation for Covid19 of not caring about poor people, when the highest voices on this were also calling for relief funds and rent freezes.

She then accuses the BLM protesters of violence and looting, with not one word about the police escalation of violence, nor of white supremacist provocateurs.

And of course, she thinks wanting to join protests for social justice is hypocrisy if yesterday you were encouraging people not to go to clubs and restaurants to avoid the pandemic.

And finally, of course she will defend the right of Holocaust deniers to be heard, but calls for the most powerful celebrities to shut up or change their ways are harrasement and a sign that free speach is dead.

The whole article is a collection of these reactionary hot takes, peppered with self-defenses of how progressive the author is (she is Jewish! And has gay friends! And enjoys RuPaul's drag race!), meant to make it sound like she is one of the people who would support the causes she is actually attacking.

To follow up on [4], here's Ain terries with Glenn Loury in Vox from 2016: https://www.vox.com/2016/9/20/12915036/race-criminal-justice....

Also an interview done with him a few weeks ago: https://www.city-journal.org/racism-is-an-empty-thesis

The broadening circle of people willing to exercise their free speech to condemn Pinker's recurrent and insidious appeals to race-informed genetic determinism is a bright spot, as are the numerous people dunking on Pinker for cosigning an open letter that decries "ostracism and public shaming" as injuries to our culture of free expression, rather than expressions of that culture.

Ken White had some smart things to say about this today, with respect to "the problem of the preferred first speaker". Worth tracking down.

That's not to say there aren't dark spots; David Shor's firing certainly appears to be one of them. But I don't think any of those dark spots put Pinker, the T-1000 version of Charles Murray, above criticism. Which is, of course, what an open letter against "public shaming" purports to do.

I guess I don't see the problem of the preferred first speaker in practice.

Let's take the examples in question: I've never seen either Murray or Pinker come out of the gates swinging with poorly framed appeals to genetic determinism (if they make reference to such things at all it's almost always in response to criticism, and it never seems to be more than very light handed considered speculation). I've also never seen them lob insults, outright support mob justice, or make a targeted cherry-picked attempt to discredit a particular individual (admittedly I'm only so plugged in so it's possible I'm missing something). Yet their critics seem frequently guilty of this.

In other words, I don't think I'm holding them to a lower standard for having spoken first. Am I misunderstanding the argument? Or am I actually doing this and I'm just not aware of it?

Edit: Perhaps it's also worth stating that I do hold these two people in high regard which definitely lowers my defenses when it comes to quickly evaluating their various claims. Mainly based on how they have engaged in good faith. That said, I disagree with both of them a lot. Recently I've put a lot of effort into identifying a group of folks that I disagree with but respect, since it seems like almost nobody does that and it seems like a big problem that people only respect those they agree with.

You are as free to stick up for Pinker (and Murray) as I am to condemn them, which is the beauty of the system. Nobody is, or should be, immune to "public shaming". But those are the plain words the letter uses! It's a bit rich, coming as it does from people like JK Rowling, who have threatened to sue strangers for their Twitter opinions.

(I strongly disagree with your take on Pinker and Murray! But that's neither here nor there as far as my argument goes.)

The claim is not that anyone should be immune to public shaming. The claim is that as a culture, we are reaching for public shaming far more often than we should.

Imagine there are two college campuses. On campus A, when students disagree, the students in the majority say they felt unsafe, demand that the students in the minority be expelled, and on occasion succeed. On campus B, when students disagree, they... talk about the issue at hand with each other.

There is free speech on both campuses - after all, the government isn't involved here. Yet I think it's safe to say that orthodox thought (whatever it happens to be at the time of lock-in) is more secure at campus A than campus B. And I think it's reasonable to talk about the difference between the cultures, and advocate for one over the other.

Of course people should be free to vehemently argue against Steven Pinker's ideas. The problem is that people are instead descending to personal attacks on him, including circulating a petition (with forged signatures, to boot) to get the Linguistic Society of America to strip him of his Fellow status.

People are free to circulate petitions, including those making demands about someone's Linguistic Society status. People are not required to express only opinions you approve of. Though, of course, you're free to circulate a counter-petition against them!

What's less free is threatening to use a billion dollar fortune to file a defamation lawsuit against someone for expressing an opinion on Twitter, which at least one of the signatories did.

>People are free to circulate petitions, including those making demands about someone's Linguistic Society status. [...] Though, of course, you're free to circulate a counter-petition against them!

People are free to insult others and you are free to counter-insult them. And you are also free to write an open letter asking people to try to discuss their issues, rather then insulting each other, circulating petitions against each other or getting each other fired.

>People are not required to express only opinions you approve of.

This is what you might call the "doctrine of the second speaker". Alice expresses a view Bob finds offensive. Bob calls for Alice to be fired. John says that people shouldn't be fired for expressing offensive views. Then Tom points out that "People are not required to express only opinions you approve of." After all, Bob's call for Alice to be fired is protected by the first amendment, therefore (?) it's wrong to critizise people for calling for others to be fired for offensive views.

That's true. People can insult each other. There are limits: you can't intentionally and convincingly relate false facts about people (that's defamation). But calling for people's termination? That's an opinion you're unquestionably free to share.

Yes, calling for a company to fire someone is generally protected under the First Amendment. (There might be some edge cases, like if a state has a criminal anti-discrimination law and someone is inciting the company (to unlawfully fire a specific person specifically on the basis on a legally protected characteristic).)

But the ideal of freedom of expression is broader than limitations on the powers of government. The ideal also encompasses social norms that encourage open and honest discussion. Bad arguments made in appropriate public forums should be met with counterarguments, and certainly not with being placed on industry blacklists or getting fired. Otherwise, there are very real chilling effects on the willingness of people to engage in honest discussion. (To clarify what I mean by "appropriate public forum" above, let me give an example: Protesting someone's funeral by marching on a public sidewalk and waving signs inscribed "God hates X" is legally protected (Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443 (2011)), but is outside the bounds of what most people would consider appropriate. Protesting in that place and manner rightfully subjects the protester to public scorn.)

I can't say anything about this better than Ken White did today; I cosign this in its entirety:

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1280992193591689221

> /6 That's because of the fundamental deal behind First Amendment values: you can't use the government to punish speech because the marketplace of ideas, the private sector, society's "more speech" is the best way to address "bad speech," not government action.

This category of "more speech", including everything from criticism to calling for someone to get fired is dishonest. The letter doesn't oppose criticism.

Calling for people to be fired is "more speech".

The HN guidelines say:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Are these good guidelines? Do you think they encourage better better discussions? Do you value having a community in which these guidelines are culturally accepted? If people started violating these guidelines en masse, do you think it would make sense to defend them?

Or would that be silly, because the answer to bad speech is more speech?

The way I see it, the answer to bad speech is more speech. But that doesn't mean there can't be cultural differences in the way we use speech - some worlds in which we more often misrepresent our oppenents, interpret their statements in the worst possible light, and use that to attempt to destroy their lives, and some worlds in which we choose not to. I view the letter as an attempt to move us towards the latter world - say, to push discourse away from Twitter-style and towards HN-style debate.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. You are free to speak. You are not free to speak in my house, as I have not invited you there. If I did invite you, I could attach conditions.

I'm saying there exist, in some communities, cultural norms that we treat ideas we disagree with with respect. We interpret them charitably. We don't make personal attacks on those who hold them. We assume good faith.

If you understand why someone might defend those cultural norms on Hacker News, then perhaps you can understand why someone would defend those same norms in, say, academia, or journalism, or publishing, or the arts.

No, the fact that you're not welcome to speak in my house does not enjoin you against speaking ill of me outside of my house. I can't even comprehend the argument you're trying to make. The norms of HN don't bind on the whole world.

Let me try to restate.

As I understand it, you're saying that people are advocating for the free expression of ideas - and yet, when people use that freedom to insult them call for their termination, they get mad. This seems contradictory and unfair to you. If I want the right to say whatever I want, then I have to accept that some people will choose to use that right to say things like "enoch_r is a despicable human being and his employer, family, and friends should all know about it immediately." Is that an accurate summary of your views?

In response, I am saying that norms like we have on HN (such as the principle of charity) contribute to the free expression of ideas. If we didn't have those norms, people wouldn't feel free to investigate controversial ideas, or have discussions like this one, and the intellectual climate would be impoverished.

Similar norms contribute to the free exchange of ideas in academia.

The letter advocates for such norms to be defended in academia.

It is reasonable to carve out spaces where particular norms apply, especially when those places have idiosyncratic goals, like HN's goal of "gratifying intellectual curiosity".

It is not reasonable to export those norms outside of those spaces to other spaces that don't share those idiosyncracies.

Some calls to terminate people are, in my judgement, bad. David Shor is a good example. I will use my freedom of expression to say that the people who called for his ouster made a grave and self-defeating error and should be ashamed of themselves.

Some calls to terminate people are not, in my judgement, bad.

HN might, along with the authors of this Letter, hope for a blanket norm against calling for anyone's ouster. They can ask for it; that's their right. But it's not a reasonable expectation, and they can't honestly pretend the norm already exists or that others are obligated to adhere to it because they want it.

I completely agree that some calls to terminate people are good, and others are bad.

I think you're interpreting my comments, and the letter, as saying "there should be a blanket norm against calling for anyone's ouster for their opinions, no matter how vile." I'm not, and I don't think the letter is either.

I'm saying, and I believe the letter is saying, that we have become overly quick to reach for the tools of suppression in response to opposing views. That the spectrum of views which we interpret charitably is shrinking, and the spectrum of views that we view as fireable offenses is growing. It's not simply that the overton window has shifted and previously acceptable views are no longer okay (though I think that's clearly part of it). It's that the overton window has shrunk dramatically, even as we've moved towards much more brutal enforcement of it.

Anyway: thanks for the interesting discussion - I'm glad we've carved out this space for it! ;)

It's disappointing to read this thread. Even tptacek, a prominent speaker on Hacker News, exhibits bizarre ignorance regarding this topic.

Generally speaking, it seems to me that much sloppy thinking in the current debate involves the mixture of the following basic errors:

1) Ignorance about biology. Evolutionary biology has been an exceptionally fertile section of science for the last decades, and provided deeper understandings on many biological phenomenon, including human behaviors. The accusers' understanding of biology (e.g. condemning it as "genetic determinism") is at least 50 years behind.

2) Poor understanding of the due process. Calling a random petition to condemn a person publicly is exactly a witch hunt. History proves that it's a very error-prone way to punish someone, and no civilized country accept it as a proper procedure anymore.

As to (2) I'd recommend everyone to read DJB's "The death of due process". It is very important, because it may be you (or your family) to be hung by lynch mobs next time.

https://blog.cr.yp.to/20160607-dueprocess.html

I grew up in a very religious family. It was funny how you could get ostracized from the community for not following the guidelines. This really (REALLY) depended on the individual communities more so than say the religion and the relative power of that religion in that area. (EDIT: from my experience with 4 christian based religions.) For example, in Utah, not being Mormon or even being found out to consume caffeine could get you in all sorts of hot water.

What I from the left has similarities to the religious fervor of my youth. You either believe and are part of the solution. To do that you have to convert everyone, and if you aren't with us then you're against us. It might be that it just evokes a similar emotional response to me as being on the "outs" with my childhood faith.

Many people want to have faith in something. We've torn down religion as fairly corrupt, government has been likewise torn down for many people. Now we have massive leaderless movements that offer the same sort of thing.

My issue with this movement, is it's amplified the worst of our human nature by having social media (which I recognize I'm consuming right now). If you don't want global censoring of opposing ideas we need to have a better way of performing human interactions online. We need more humanization of people through technology not the dehumanization of people through technology.

It very much feels like a secular religion/cult to some folks I see. Faith based beliefs that attack data/science, chanting, martyrs, blasphemy, etc.

> My issue with this movement, is it's amplified the worst of our human nature by having social media (which I recognize I'm consuming right now).

What movement do you mean?

> If you don't want global censoring of opposing ideas we need to have a better way of performing human interactions online.

I absolutely agree with this. My experience with online interactions is that they've been filled with polarized sentiment for a long time (I've heard the sentiment "never read the comments" about news articles on the internet for at least 5 years), not just in the last few months.

Movement as in general cultural shift with the advent of social media. Not really a specific movement as in #somemovement.

For example. I'd fucking love to have this conversation with a group of people and instead of getting a ^ or (Insert down arrow) see your expression, you either nodding along, or making a slight facial tweak that lets me know I hurt your feelings so I can see, oh crap, I shouldn't have said "movement" and instead said cultural shift. That real-time feedback that build empathy and makes me not want to piss you off, or makes me walk away thinking, we'll we're never going to see eye to eye.

The movement from me having lunch with friends, to losing them on facebook because they support #somemovement and I have a nuanced opinion about it.

EDIT: I'm also not implying I hurt your feelings with the word movement, I'm creating a narrative specific to this thread to create an example of how in a in person setting I might have picked up on that, but in text I have to be super clear instead of being able to have an easy back and forth to get to the nuance of what I meant.

"[T]hird-wave antiracism is a profoundly religious movement in everything but terminology. The idea that whites are permanently stained by their white privilege, gaining moral absolution only by eternally attesting to it, is the third wave’s version of original sin. The idea of a someday when America will “come to terms with race” is as vaguely specified a guidepost as Judgment Day. Explorations as to whether an opinion is “problematic” are equivalent to explorations of that which may be blasphemous. The social mauling of the person with “problematic” thoughts parallels the excommunication of the heretic. What is called “virtue signaling,” then, channels the impulse that might lead a Christian to an aggressive display of her faith in Jesus."

https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/america-is-in-the-grip...

Firing people for expressing "distasteful" views publicly is nothing new. In 2003, MSNBC fired the host of their most popular program, Phil Donahue, for expressing his opposition to the Iraq War.

> An internal MSNBC memo warned Donahue was a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war,” providing “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

Fortunately for Phil, he was well-off and probably wasn't relying on the income.

With at-will employment, companies have enormous leverage over their workers' freedom of expression and it's disappointing to see this letter with some ostensibly "left" signatures attached leave that consideration untouched.

I'm very on board with ending at-will employment, but it would only address a small subset of the issues they're describing. Employment protections won't prevent books from being withdrawn, journalists and professors from being censured, or leaders from being forced to resign.

Right, nor should it. The same protections that would keep a person from being forced to step down when someone discovers they were pro-Iraq war would be used to protect them from being forced to step down when someone discovers they're a Klan leader.

On a related note: arguably one of the biggest "cancellings" of the post-9/11 era was that of the Dixie Chicks [1].

"Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas."

The above comment (made by the lead singer at a concert in England) was all it took for them to receive death threats and get blacklisted by thousands of radio stations in the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks_controversy

They were hardly cancelled though, they were more feted after the controversy. They went from the CMA to winning album of the year at the Grammys, got on the cover of Rolling Stone, etc. In many ways they vaulted from the country music backwater into the mainstream.

Interestingly enough, they changed their name to “The Chicks” 2 weeks ago.

> Firing people for expressing "distasteful" views publicly is nothing new.

I don't think that is a correct synopsis of the concern. The concern is that there is no space to discuss the definition of "distasteful". There are also a bunch of amorphous terms being thrown around and any attempt to clarify those terms in general or to challenge how a person is using those terms or to explore the ramification of those terms; those efforts are themselves labeled "distasteful".

I'm hesitant to even list the terms that I don't think are well defined in our public discourse for this very reason. I anticipate that I will be immediately labeled as persona-non-grata for trying to clarify what the heck we are talking about.

> The concern is that there is no space to discuss the definition of "distasteful".

What do you mean by this? What kind of space is missing? Was that fact that being anti-war is distasteful something that was discussed and agreed upon in 2003, so that firing was alright?

Analogies are dangerous, but I'll give it a shot.

In your 2003 scenario, an analogous concern would be if someone pointed out that Saddam Hussein was indeed violating some UN provisions and the response was for that person to be fired because that observation was evidence that they were "pro-war" or not sufficiently "anti-war".

My observation wouldn't be there was no "right" to fire the person but instead would be that the logical inference that triggered the firing was faulty and ill-informed. If managers everywhere we reacting that way I might suggest that there was no space to discuss the topic without undo consequences.

I can be fired by an boss who thinks I'm being insubordinate, they have that right. But it would be helpful if that boss had some evidence that I was being insubordinate and didn't use my request to clarify my insubordination as evidence that I was being insubordinate.

I think this comes down to a lack of trust in good-faith debate. People don't trust that someone "from the other side" will actually have the empathy and generosity required to have a good-faith discussion on a topic.

Also, I believe that we're constantly hearing so many voices trying to convince us one way or another, that our own discussions on those topics end up being attempts to convince others. That would explain "safe spaces" to some degree -- people don't want the pressure of having someone else try to convince them of something they don't agree with.

Some of it just the two-party system. The points don't matter, just which side of the line each person is on. I wonder if more parties would help depolarize the situation. I'm really not sure.

Your first point sounds accurate to me.

I think what we're seeing is the solidification of identity in such strong and unyielding terms that anything that threatens that identity immediately triggers a basic survival instinct. At that point, rational discourse is not possible.

Correct. Rational discourse has already happened, for decades. We appear on the cusp of a structural shift, and in that span of time rational discourse isn't welcome.

People talked about whether the US should enter World War I for years before the German navy targeted US merchant vessels. After the decision to enter, speaking out against the militarization was grounds for arrest. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fiery-socialist-chall...

People not willing to venture out their echo chambers is bad, but much better than being hell bent on taking away the livelihood of others for bad tweets.

It's also experiential - people reaching out in good faith for debate have consistently had their hand chewed up in return; and then a whole audience that sees that exchange and cements their opinions further. I'd argue the problem is often the choice of venue, and the expectation that internet strangers are truly going to come to a debate in good faith, but it still sets a consistent tone.

We have more parties than the US and are less polarised[1]. I recommend more parties, but don't see any incremental way the US could get them.

[1] but then again, we had a mid-nineteenth century religiously-motivated civil war and it only killed a few hundred people. So maybe we support a plurality of parties because we're less polarisable, and not the other way around?

(rather than having a fabric of society, prone to ripping, having a dense irregular felt of society, of tocquevillean overlapping voluntary associations, FTW?)

Ranked choice voting would help considerably

> That would explain "safe spaces" to some degree -- people don't want the pressure of having someone else try to convince them of something they don't agree with.

In my experience, it's more that people don't try to convince. Hell, the people who need safe-spaces, and the people they're trying to be "safe" from, don't even share the underlying epistemic assumptions that would allow them to "convince" each-other of anything less clearly observable than the sky being blue. The latter group, the people who other people need to be "safe" from, usually just scream, berate, harass, and often resort to violence.

(Note that I've avoided identifying "which side" is which. The answer is: it depends which side is dominant in your particular area. Boston and San Francisco and Brooklyn are left-dominant. Middle America is right-dominant.)

No place in the US is left-dominant (this is true of most of Europe as well). There are right-dominant areas and centrist-dominant areas. Left discourse (think Chomsky) is extremely rare and almost never accepted in the media.

> Left discourse (think Chomsky) is extremely rare and almost never accepted in the media.

It must really baffle you that Chomsky signed this letter.

Why would it? There is a real problem with lack of tolerance of opposing ideas and witch hunting, obviously on the right but also in the center and even on the left.

And I have seen a lot of people on the left raising this problem and discussing how this will ultimately be used against them when, even when today it is done for mlre left-leaning goals. I think Professor Chomsky is extremely well aware of how easily tools of censorship are wielded against the voices of the minority.

And note that a lot of the grand-standing and calls to boycotts on these issues is coming from liberals, not leftists.

This is untrue when applied to social/cultural political issues. For example, the prevailing view during the Democratic primaries that undocumented immigrants should get universal healthcare coverage is to the left of nearly every EU country. Trump’s order required enhanced scrutiny of immigrants from certain Muslim countries is tame compared to Macron’s plans to essentially nationalize Islam. (And Macron is the left candidate—his far-right opponent is now receiving 45% of the support in polls.) Canada’s point-based immigration system, supported by the left and the right there, which heavily weighs English language fluency, would be denounced as irredeemably racist by the mainstream left in the US. What we are seeing in the media now, with attacks on the country’s founding documents and historical figures, would be utterly condemned in say France.

On social issues, our left is as far left as anywhere else in the developed world.

> And Macron is the left candidate—his far-right opponent is now receiving 45% of the support in polls.

A centre-right candidate doesn't become "left" just because there's a far-right candidate. Maybe in the US that rhetoric works, but not in the EU.

What poll are you referring to where Macron's far-right opponent received 45%? Le Pen has 26% - less than Macron - from what I can see [0].

[0] https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/france/

> A centre-right candidate doesn't become "left" just because there's a far-right candidate.

He's the more left candidate for purposes of this comparison, which is to compare where the U.S. is relative to France. So if Macron is to the right of Trump on muslim immigrants (and I think it's fair to say he is), and 45% of French support a candidate that is even further right, I think it's fair to say the U.S. is well to the left of France on the issue.

I was citing a head-to-head matchup in the second round: https://www.ft.com/content/6d8b9c7a-412c-11ea-a047-eae9bd51c...

> A recent Ifop opinion poll put Ms Le Pen narrowly ahead of Mr Macron for an assumed first round of the 2022 election, and within a few percentage points of victory in the second round (45 per cent to his 55 per cent)

Sigh, that's just so blatant cherry-picking. Macron is deeply unpopular for his neo-liberal "reforms" that caused the yellow vests protests, a head-to-head polling against other candidates would likely render similar results.

It’s not cherry picking. An American candidate that had said the things Le Pen has said would be completely unviable. There is a reason that Trump—who is concerned outside the American norms even among many Republicans—is always accused of using “coded language” and “dog whistles.” That’s because in the US, even the “right wing fascist” candidate can’t get away with saying the overtly racist things that European right-wing people can get away with.

You blatantly cherry-picked the 45% number, but you seemed to ignore that part of my reply. Also, why are you changing the subject to what's allowed to be said or not? Trump's madness wouldn't be viable in the EU either.

A centre-right candidate doesn't become "left" just because there's a far-right candidate.

Biden faces that. He's not a classic leftist, like Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader, Gene McCarthy, or Hubert Humphrey, all of whom were presidential candidates. To today's GOP, Eisenhower and Reagan would be considered too far left.

>He's the more left candidate for purposes of this comparison, which is to compare where the U.S. is relative to France.

IMHO, the Democratic Party to En Marche is a fair comparison, but Our Revolution to En Marche is just silly. At that point, at least compare Our Revolution to the Parti Socialiste (a conventional European social-democratic party) and DSA to La France Insoumise (ie: the democratic socialist party founded by a former leader of the French Communists).

You're right that on issues of theoretical minority rights, the left-most position is actually pretty common in the US (gay rights, trans rights, feminism, we are all equal regardless of the color of our skin).

But even on the actual practical side of those rights, this is not true. Discriminatory policing practices, reparations for slavery, abortion rights for women, and others have very commonly held right-wing positions even among democratic voters and politicians.

And calling Macron left-wing is funny, especially since the election had a very clear divide: Le Pen for the (extreme) right, Macron for the center (even center-right), and Melanchon for the left (he won slightly less votes than Le Pen, while being universally derided and ignored in the press).

Note that I explicitly said that left-wing discourse is missing from the mainstream in the US AND Europe, and in fact this is true for most of the world in general, with only small pockets in South America and east Asia.

Hold on. That might have been the prevailing view counted by the candidates on stage, but it's not the prevailing view of the Democratic electorate, or of the nominee (Biden "supports" urgent care for undocumented immigrants, but does not support enrolling them in a national health plan). There was a crystal healer shaman on the stage for several of the debates; you can't just do this by roll call.

I agree with you in spirit, that we're further left than the American left realizes. But on this particular, I think you're wrong.

That’s fair. My point wasn’t to really assert a conclusion about the Democratic Party as a whole, but rather to show that there is a robust social left in the US. To my knowledge, only two Western countries extend universal (rather than emergency) care for undocumented immigrants.

The broad US support for this is at least in large part as a response to the enormous levels of undocumented immigrants present as a result of what is widely seen (across the political spectrum, though for different reasons) as an incredible failure of the US immigration system. You can’t meaningdully assess position on an ideological spectrum based on comparing preferred policy responses without considering the differences in the objective circumstances to which the policy responses are directed.

There isn't broad support for this as a policy. Everyone knows about this issue because it's one of the least popular potential Democratic policies, with a strong majority in opposition, which is why Biden doesn't support it.

> There isn't broad support for this as a policy.

Feel free to read it as “as broad as it is”, different polling from around the same time toward the end of when it was an active issue varied widely (I can find different polls from about the same time putting it at 30% and 11% support), and the exact breath of support isn't really relevant to my point.

>To my knowledge, only two Western countries extend universal (rather than emergency) care for undocumented immigrants.

Not to derail, but extending public health care to undocumented immigrants in a pandemic just makes sense. Undocumented doesn't mean vaccinated, so there's a clear public interest in minimizing the absolute number of COVID-19 carriers, no matter their legal status.

I wasn't talking about "the media", but you're just being silly if you can go to a meeting of the Cambridge or Somerville City Councils (a majority of the latter are DSA members or allies, IIRC), or get involved in San Francisco's local politics, and think the Left (ie: the kind of Left that references Chomsky) is an insignificant force in those local contexts.

> The points don't matter, just which side of the line each person is on

That's because it isn't just about ideas, it's about power. Politics and government now are not about coming to consensus solutions that everyone, or at least everyone but a small minority who just wants to game the system, can live with. Politics and government now are about imposing on everyone whichever set of ideas gets a slim 51% majority. That isn't the way it was supposed to work.

I personally would like to see a Constitutional amendment that would require a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress to pass any legislation, and a 3/4 majority required to override a Presidential veto. That would at least require some amount of bipartisan consensus, and therefore some amount of actually somewhat reasonable debate instead of just shouting back and forth, before a public policy was imposed on everyone.

"That would at least require some amount of bipartisan consensus, and therefore some amount of actually somewhat reasonable debate..."

What you would get would be a lot of back-room deals and strange bedfellows. Like now, only more so.

I'm not so sure. The back-room deals that go on now are not about getting the other side to vote for things they really don't want to vote for, as much as horse trading on which bills come up for a vote vs. getting stuck in committee or tabled. It would be harder for either side to get any value out of that if a 2/3 majority was required to pass a bill--back-room deals can't get that many votes to switch in the opposition party about something that's really contentious.

That's not to say that any bill that gets enough bipartisan consensus to pass a 2/3 vote must be good; plenty of bills that have passed in the past with that much consensus have been bad. But I think it might change the dynamics in at least something like the right direction.

That's because the tools in place to override a tabling are the 2/3 vote tools.

Make everything 2/3 vote and you increase the need for the dealings that override the current 2/3 vote tools.

Which tools are you talking about?

Bills can be forced out of committee to the floor via a discharge petition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discharge_petition), but it requires a 2/3 vote.

A) a 2/3 requirement would mean nothing gets passed, benefitting the only party that gains by obstructing legislation, the Republican Party

B) it doesn’t matter how high the bar is set when one side refuses to do their half of bipartisan responsibility (see impeachment)

When people are strictly divided, the barrier to pass something should be lower so that elections change things again. A government that can’t act might as well not exist. There’s no point in holding elections if legislators never pass any change. The liberal values that make the West free depend on civic engagement.

> a 2/3 requirement would mean nothing gets passed

Plenty of laws have been passed with that much of a majority.

> When people are strictly divided, the barrier to pass something should be lower so that elections change things again.

No, when people are strictly divided, they should try different things locally instead of having one side's preferred policies simply imposed on the other--much less having things flip again for everyone every time the party in power changes. That means it should be harder to pass Federal legislation that is binding on everyone, not easier. Federal legislation should only be passed if it has broad enough support to make it worth attempting to impose on everyone. Policies that don't have that kind of broad support throughout the country simply should not be enacted at the Federal level. They should be tried out on a smaller scale, in a state or locality where there is broad enough support.

> The liberal values that make the West free depend on civic engagement.

Civic engagement at all levels. Using the Federal government as a bludgeon to impose one side's policies on everyone is not "civic engagement". It's tyranny. Which is exactly what we set up the United States of America to protect against.

I think a big part of it is the public space. Let's say I'm on X side of a debate. I can, in good faith, try to talk to someone from side Y. I might find some such person, or even several.

The problem is, if we're talking in a public forum, anyone can come up (from side X, side Y, or both) and jump in not in good faith. And so I get, as Fellshard said, my hand chewed off, not by the person I was talking to, but by a bunch of drive-by conversation-killers.

Under current conditions, I don't think a real conversation can happen in public (which includes social media).

We don’t want to convince each other, we want to destroy each other.

handwave I think it's more "disempower," in general. There's nearly no doing open shooting, but people out in the streets are extremely disinterested in a conversation about "Maybe cops aren't so bad, you guys."

I find it weird that so many people seem to think that "attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity" (I guess this is a fancy way of saying cancel culture?) is a big problem, because frankly I have no idea how big a problem it is. Where are the statistics on this? How many are actually impacted by it? There are many articles citing examples and saying how dangerous it is (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/25/online-shaming-d...), and yes there are certainly such examples, but are these just outliers? Is this like air travel, where really for the most part it's ok for people to speak their minds and people get overly freaked out because of rare events?

Actually curious to hear what people on here think about this.

What kind of data are you looking for? Number of people fired for a tweet? Number of colleagues shunned for not being woke enough?

Yes, something along those lines. It's not like it's impossible to categorize and quantify and catalogue 'cancel culture' events -- even if the result is somewhat subjective , it's better than just this vague belief based on rare examples. I mean honestly, is this 'cancel culture' really a thing, or it is mostly celebrities sometimes being criticized (at times rightly by sensible progressives, at times wrongly by overly woke people) that somehow has many on HN and a whole lot of people so anxious?

It's not about just the celebrities. People are anxious that they, personally, might be fired or lose friends if they don't believe the right things.

But is that actually happening? Is this a legitimate fear for regular people or just celebrities?[1] If you lose friends for expressing your beliefs, were they actually your friends? (Or alternately - maybe they are actually good people who have finally tired of your toxic behavior, and you should reconsider your beliefs if your friends are abandoning you for them?) Are people actually being fired for expressing reasonable opinions, or is most of the firing happening when people express truly hateful and dangerous things?[2]

I honestly have no idea. I'm not on Twitter or Reddit and I religiously avoid confrontation on Facebook so maybe I'm just out of touch. My anecdotal experience suggests that apart from a few outliers the impact of cancel-culture on regular people is overblown. I don't know what statistics I'd look at to determine if that's broadly true. It seems like every time I hear someone say something like "Now I'm not even allowed to express opinions or state facts anymore!" what they actually mean is "Now when I say kind of horrible things online in a deliberate attempt to be confrontational people yell at me on Twitter!" I see a lot of what I would consider radical-right and sometimes downright hateful opinions expressed on Facebook, and the people expressing them aren't getting cancelled, fired, or even called out. Mostly they're just being congratulated by their filter bubble.

I have definitely scratched my head at some of the high-profile 'cancellations' for things that seem pretty innocuous. It seems like this mostly only happens to celebrities who have positioned themselves as liberal thinkers, though. Definitely a problem for them, and I don't envy the PC pitfalls they have to navigate. But to be fair it happens on both sides of the political spectrum - recently I've seen a number of right-leaning folks on my Facebook feed "cancelling" the NFL for the national anthem thing, or for considering renaming teams with culturally insensitive names, etc.

[1] Not that things that are only problems for celebrities aren't real problems, but I think it changes the discussion a bit.

[2] A recent example I saw of something I would consider dangerous and hateful was a screenshot of a Facebook post with a picture of a noose and a caption about teaching criminals and looters to fear the law again or something equally horrible. The profile picture was an older white woman and indicated she worked at a school. Two things stood out to me here: 1) It could easily have been faked, in part or in whole. She should have an opportunity to defend herself (the whole point of the legal system) assuming she's a real person and the profile itself wasn't entirely fabricated as outrage porn. 2) If it was real I would definitely not want my kids attending a school that would keep her on staff.

> It seems like this mostly only happens to celebrities who have positioned themselves as liberal thinkers, though

A professional soccer player was fired because his wife made racist posts [1]. Not him, his wife. Of course, that is still something happening to a celebrity (even if a relatively minor one), but the precedent that a person can be fired because of something a family member said is chilling.

(Of course, given at-will employment, it was legal to fire him for this – being married to a person with shitty views is not a protected class – but, not everything legal should be socially acceptable, and firing someone simply because of their spouse's opinions should not be socially acceptable.)

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jun/05/aleksandar-...

> But is that actually happening

Yes. [0] There are many examples. Jon Ronson wrote a book in 2015 called "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" that profiled, IIRC, a half of a dozen different people, just normal people, not celebrities, who were dragged publicly on Twitter and MSM and lost their jobs, etc...

[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin...

Yes, it is actually happening, and not just to celebrities:

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-ove...

It's pretty clear what your view on cancel culture is, namely that it's not really a thing.

Got any data to back that up?

My wording in the prior comment was perhaps too strong - I don't in fact believe it's not a thing, as I've said there exist examples of people being canceled so I guess it's fair to say I believe a definition of cancel culture that just means it's possible for people to be canceled. But I am expressing skepticism regarding its extent and questioning why people are so worried about it. Even if I believed it was not a thing, it should not be up to be to prove the non-existence of something (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot).

If you'd like to see how big of a problem it is, post "males are not females" or "males do not have periods" or "all lives matter" or "we should not be giving hormone blockers to children" to your Twitter or Facebook accounts. Go right ahead. If you feel even the slightest bit of trepidation over publicly stating any of those things, then you will see first hand how big of a problem it is.

*edit

this very post will be down-voted

Feeling trepidation before posting sentiments that have complex and potentially problematic histories within public discourse does not equate to being targeted by cancel culture.

If I post "the Republic party interfered with Donald Trump's impeachment investigation by not allowing witnesses to testify before Congress" on my social media I'm sure I would get some backlash; that does not mean that I have been cancelled. It means that I've chosen to post decisively about an issue that might not be as black and white as I consider it to be.

You think the phrase "males are not females" is problematic?

males are not females is not a problematic statement. "all lives matter" certainly has a problematic history and "we should not be giving hormone blockers to children" brings up a pretty complex social issue for a lot of folks.

If I were to post one of these things, I would certainly get some side-eye, but I very much doubt I would be fired or the like. And since when is feeling some trepidation over saying something controversial (because people might dislike you for it) unnatural? I mean, is your stance "it should be ok for me to say whatever I like publicly"?

I guess you think these are all examples of perfectly rational things to say that cannot be disputed, but let's just take "all lives matter". Sure, no one can disagree that "all lives matter", but saying this implies that you think this in response to "black lives matter" , and Pinker himself articulates the issue with this well:

"Linguists, of all people, should understand the difference between a trope or collocation, such as the slogan “All lives matter,” and the proposition that all lives matter. (Is someone prepared to argue that some lives don’t matter?) And linguists, of all people, should understand the difference between a turn in the context of a conversational exchange and a sentence that expresses an idea. It’s true that if someone were to retort “All lives matter” in direct response to “Black lives matter,’ they’d be making a statement that downplays the racism and other harms suffered by African Americans."

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/07/05/the-purity-posse-p...

I could see myself getting fired from my company for stating one of these views. Even as I write this, I feel it's important for me to state the following.

I think the "all lives matter" is a anti-slogan to something important so I wouldn't say that. I think the first two are based on sex, which is not really disputed. You can gender identify how you'd like though.

I think the hormone blockers is a complex issue and I'll leave it at that.

But I recognize that if I held radical ideas (which the ones you pointed out are either on the edge or beyond it), I very well might get fired for expressing them in a public forum if someone showed that to my companies HR. To deny that is just me being blind.

To be clear, I took my job with that explicit knowledge that, any public information on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, or here would be scrutinized. I don't like it, but I also went into that with my eyes wide open.

"Males are not females" is a radical idea? You might be surprised at the number of radicals in this country, then. Enough, in fact, that it seems a stretch to call it "radical".

>I think the first two are based on sex, which is not really disputed. You can gender identify how you'd like though.

I specifically addressed this with my opinion which I feel confident won't get me fired in my comment. I could have been clearer in saying, I don't believe that the idea that sex males are not sex females is a radical idea. Gender wise I'll respect anyone being called whatever they would like to be called.

I don't understand the gender issue, I don't really think I need to. I do respect that people have complex feelings which are made easier by me addressing them in the manner which they prefer. It's no sweat off my back as long as it doesn't impede the scientific study of sex differences in order to better treat and identify diseases specific to sex.

At least 1/10 of the posts on my Facebook feed at any given time say one of those things or something similar. The people making these posts are not being cancelled, fired, or really even called out.

In my filter bubble the people posting things like 'Black Lives Matter', suggesting that we use people's chosen pronouns, or indicating that maybe our current justice system is anything other than absolutely upstanding and unchangeable are the ones being called out. They're still not being fired for their opinions, though.

I think this framing of the issue is pretty interesting. There are a decent number of articles that talk about how cancel culture affects celebrities, but I do think it would be pretty hard to quantify the effects of cancel culture. It seems hard to define.

Personally, I'm not totally sold by the letter from Harper's. But I don't have data one way or another to support my bias. I don't believe at face value that cancel culture is the root cause (or even a root cause) of the problems folks see with American public discourse. I wonder how to quantify something like this.

Why do you need data when you can experience the chilling effect cancel culture has on open discussion for yourself?

Well, when people argue against BLM/M4BL I often hear calls to statistics. That's a potential bias of my own, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think about what metrics we might be able to use as indicators of whether cancel culture is created by an unsubstantiated bias that some folks have or if it might actually be a phenomenon that has a real impact on the way that the average person communicates.

Basically what I'm saying is that I personally don't feel or notice a lot of "cancel culture" within my own life, and I'm trying to better understand where people feel like it comes from. Data might not be necessary, but it might also make the impacts more clear. I'm just wondering about how to frame the issue in a way that makes sense to me.

I'm not sure how you'd go about collecting statistics on the question. You can go poll employers on how many people they've fired for ideological nonconformity, but they're all going to report 0 regardless of whether it's true. Anecdotes might be the best evidence available.

I suspect that employers would not admit to firing people for ideological nonconformity, even if they did so. There would be some platitude instead, and you'd have to decode whether the platitude meant that or not.

> Where are the statistics on this? How many are actually impacted by it?

It's a real problem, but mostly just for the sort of people who might sign on to a letter such as this: elite think tankers, academics, and columnists, who would love nothing more than to be able to continue spouting unsubstantiated nonsense with impunity.

If your livelihood is throwing opinions into the Internet wind, then of course cancel culture is an existential threat. As these sorts of people now tend to be extremely online, every little barb and retort pains them disproportionally, too.

For most of us, it's just a distraction. If you're not famous on the Internet, you can't be canceled to begin with.

Nonsense.

Read Matt Taibbi’s recent article for starters. David Shor(a junior data scientist), a Mexican-American construction worker etc.

12-year olds kicked out of school and ostracised for saying the n-word on some random TikTok.

You really must be kidding when you’re saying “normal” people aren’t affected.

Who's brilliant idea was it to give 12-year-olds unfettered access to a bidirectional wide-band broadcasting tool? That's unwise independent of the specific outcome you're describing.

I think most of the people being able to speak against the mob opinion have many things in common. They are rich, famous, and are generally hard to cancel. Carmack, JKRowling and maybe even pinker are in this category. For example, one writer got fired just for tweeting "I stand with JK Rowling". (https://www.scotsman.com/news/people/scots-author-sacked-bac...) . Many professors have been suspended just for not speaking tone in tone with the popular opinion. If Pinker wasn't this famous, he might have been fired by now.

The problem with JKR in particular, is that she is "speaking out" against a group of people who are extremely oppressed, and using outdated / debunked info to do so.

Because of who she is, and her massive audience, this does real damage.

A person's right to even exist in society shouldn't be up for debate.

No one is debating whether trans people have the right to exist.

JKR is in fact doing that, everyday. Basically, if trans people aren't free to even use the bathroom in public that matches their gender identities, then we can't live in public society.

LMAO the right to use a public restroom of your choice == the right to exist.

And ironically, the people on the other side of the debate are working as hard as they can to find ways to deny conservatives the actual, literal right to exist.

> A person's right to even exist in society shouldn't be up for debate.

But she isn't saying anything like that. No where has she ever said that trans people don't have a right to exist.

> Because of who she is, and her massive audience, this does real damage.

But this is the only reason she is able to speak at all. Another author got fired just for tweeting that she supported JKR. If JKR wasn't so famous, she would have been fired and cancelled long ago.

> against a group of people who are extremely oppressed, and using outdated / debunked info to do so

I have no expertise on the information JKR and her opponents are tweeting, but I agree she might be incorrect in several. But is it so wrong for her as a woman to say that she doesn't feel comfortable if any man who self identifies as a woman is allowed access to women spaces, because this is what a lot of her opponents reply with. Please note that women also have been oppressed for not centuries, but millennium.

With seeing more letters like this recently, I wonder if they can really have much of an effect. They seem to just ask kindly that people act more kind, which often doesn't do a whole ton. What is needed is to change the way communication is occurring away from viral algorithms promoting the most viral content (outragebait), which only certain companies and people can do.

> What is needed is to change the way communication is occurring away from viral algorithms promoting the most viral content (outragebait), which only certain companies and people can do.

Exactly. Articles like this are fine and all, but they're generally preaching to the choir; the audience they really need to reach is indifferent to the arguments, and like it or not, calling for someone to be cancelled is also an exercise of their free speech rights.

Social networks don't want to change anything, because culture wars drive engagement (even if they slowly make the platforms uninhabitable).

I don't know what's to be done except to move away from social networks into smaller communities (Slack groups, etc.) that have their own norms of discourse.

> Social networks don't want to change anything, because culture wars drive engagement

Is there any public evidence that outrage-driven engagement is profitable? It's a statement that is frequently repeated, but I haven't seen any evidence for it.

Admittedly, there's no smoking gun here, just inferential evidence from the fact that they don't tweak their algorithms to curb it. Which, admittedly, could be that they don't have the resources to do it -- but in either case, my point is that the solution probably will not come from the social networks on their own accord.

I really like the term "outragebait", I think it fits perfectly.

One tactic i think is pretty clever is changing neutral to mean against. You can be vehemently for a topic or vehemently against a topic or you can just keep your mouth shut and live your life as you see fit.

I guess too many people were doing that because now those people are being positioned as part of the opposition. Now, not only are you suppose to be outraged at the other side you're suppose to be outraged at everyone not outraged or on the other side.

Walking back from the precipice we're on is going to be very, very hard.

When I try to visit that page, I get an error saying "504 - this request was canceled", which is darkly amusing in its appropriateness.

I had the same, refreshed twice and it loaded.

You can find an Internet Archive snapshot here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200707133437/https://harpers.o...

FWIW getting server errors on this did make me chuckle, because the publisher of Harper's Magazine has had a reputation for being a neo-Luddite when it comes to web publishing [0]:

> He described being trapped in a corridor in the early 2000s “by a small mob of what I can’t help but refer to as ‘young people.’ ” Those youths, he wrote, demanded that he open the magazine to online readers. What he told them was “essentially, forget it.” The web, to him, “wasn’t much more than a gigantic Xerox machine” designed to rob publishers and writers.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160112032957/https://www.nytim...

One of the most fascinating things to me about the 1960s has always been the fashion in which power was transferred from the old left of the day, to what was then known as the "New Left" - Tom Hayden's crowd. I've always wondered what it would look like to see something like that happen in real time.

One might hope to see the then-"New Left", now both physically and ideologically very much the old left, face their supersedure with greater equanimity than their own predecessors, to whom they offered no more kindness than they are receiving now. They, too, had their little lists, back when they were young. To bleat about having earned a place on others' lists now fails to favorably impress, for all that it's unsurprising.

I think this is very important.

Mob justice over what people said years ago is very dangerous. And due to the global nature of the internet, it is very hard to get the mob off your back. It seems many students have been denied their college admissions due to stuff they tweeted as a teenager. It seems in the modern world felons deserve redemption, but bad tweeters do not. Not to mention that cancelling people over what they said in the past is so stupid, that if applied consistently, will lead to funny scenarios. For example, if teenagers should be punished for their past tweets, why shouldn't be Joe Biden for saying on the record that he doesn't support same.sex marriage in the 2008 VP debates. This is not even counting what opinions biden held in the 20th century.

It seems that we have come to a point where you simply can't speak on certain topics, neither in the affirmative nor in the negative, and so most people end up saying what will keep the mob at bay. Case in point, all the people attacking JK Rowling do not want to say that any man who self ids as a woman should have access to women's private spaces.

> It seems many students have been denied their college admissions due to stuff they tweeted as a teenager.

How many of them have still been denied after showing genuine remorse for their views? Nobody is owed a college admission.

> all the people attacking JK Rowling do not want to say that any man who self ids as a woman should have access to women's private spaces

Nobody's saying that men who falsely claim to be women should have access to women's spaces.

Nobody is owed a college admission.

Nobody is universally "owed" anything but we do a lot of good and prudent things anyway because it's entirely within our capacity to execute good and prudent acts and we're sometimes better off for it. And yes we sometimes do bad and despicable things because sometimes impulse overrides reason, but that too is in our capacity to put a handle on and reign in, so we do, or at least we ought to.

So maybe there's a better way to articulate this dichotomy than the lazy argument of "You're not owed $thing"-which doesn't solve anything for anyone except the speaker's own ego.

> Nobody's saying that men who falsely claim to be women should have access to women's spaces.

What are they saying?

That trans women are women.

In what sense? That is, in terms of their gender, or their sex, or both?

"Women" is not a sex.

You don't see people saying "trans women are biologically female" for a reason.

Things are getting just a little bit ridiculous in America when you have people saying "women" is not a sex.

Not at all. It's a gender.

Can you elaborate on what makes that statement so ridiculous on it's face?

If you check a dictionary, the top definition for "woman" is typically something like "an adult female person" or "an adult female human." So the claim that woman/man is a totally different thing from male/female is pretty novel.

Indeed, I bring this up elsewhere, but there's been a lot of overlap of the medical and the social throughout history. That's changed recently. I don't see how that makes things "ridiculous" to quote GP.

How widespread are those changes though?

The Wikipedia article on Sex Differences in Humans uses the terms man/woman and male/female interchangeably[1]. What little I've seen of the scientific literature follows this convention as well.

It's my experience that, across a broad swath of American society, that many people follow the old convention as well.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans

To be honest, I'm not quite sure of the point you're trying to make here.

Yes, in most contexts in present western society, male/female and man/woman are interchangeable (and certain groups have a vested interest in maintaining this state). There are however contexts in which they are not. Trans people (and allies) need to be cognizant of these things to be able to discuss the differences.

If your argument is that to an observer, "trans women are women" could be interpreted as "trans women are biologically female", then sure one could interpret it that way. But in the context of discussions about trans people, women and female mean different things, which is why "trans women are women" is the phrase, and not "trans women are biologically female".

That dictionaries haven't caught up is kind of disappointing, but if you look at the wiki page, it mentions trans women at the end, which seems kind of strange to do in the context of biological female-ness.

I'll also note that because it's so common to conflate the two, that I try to explicitly add the "biologically" modifier when discussing bio sex. in contexts not talking about trans groups, I'm sure I've conflated the terms without noticing.

My point is that the idea that there is this (clear) distinction between sex and gender is not universally accepted and that there may be some reasons why people are skeptical of it.

In terms of the science of sex differences, my understanding is that they (at least sometimes) don't make the distinction between sex and gender because many traits and social behaviors that we might assume to be part of "gender" end up having a underlying biological component as well (that isn't easily separable).

In terms of the general populace, I would say that for many people the realities of their biological sex (including their reproductive capacity) have a great deal of impact on their gendered experience.

This is not to say that the experience of trans people should be ignored. But this may help account for some of the surprise people express at statements like "trans women are women" or "women is not a sex".

male/female are biological descriptions. Men/Women are social constructs. A man can wear a woman's dress, but a male cannot be pregnant and give birth.

> Men/Women are social constructs.

What does it mean for these categories to be social constructs? What criteria makes one a man or a woman?

> What criteria makes one a man or a woman?

That's up to the society, hence their definitions as social constructs. For example, when you shop for dresses, do mostly men or women come up? Articles of clothing by themselves are not tied to the biology of a person's sex... meaning a vagina/penis is not required to wear a dress.

But most of society (as it is now) has deemed that woman are associated with dresses, while men are associated with suits. That image is now changing, although slowly, with trans and other non-binary genders.

An easy way to see this is to ask yourself if you think it's acceptable for men to wear dresses? If so, ask why we don't see more of that in the workplace.

> That's up to the society, hence their definitions as social constructs.

So, if someone identifies as as man, but society disagrees, is that person a man? What reasons would a society have to change their criteria to include this person in the category of "man"?

There are lots of reasons that a society would change. Some factors would include newer generations introducing ideas that the older generation didn't take heed to.

Marriage used to be strictly between a man and a woman. Now society says it can include homosexuals. Women used to stay at home to take care of the house, while men worked at jobs to provide for the entire family. Now society says both roles can be taken up by both men and women. Black people used to sit at the back of the bus, and now anyone can sit anywhere.

I mean, society constantly changes. We see it in history, we even see it today within our own lives. Places like Saudi Arabia are currently having their own version of woman's suffrage even as we speak.

So given this, in your example person, I would wager that society would deem that person not a man, since the hypothetical society has already decided it that way. But that's not to say that person will give up on not being recognized as a man. Our human history has shown us that we don't just stop at an idea, some of us go all the way to pave new rights for entire future generations to come.

Whether or not society adopts the new definitions, well, that's up to the people living in it.

I see people say many things, not all of them make sense or appear consistent to me, which is why I am asking questions.

I appreciate the answer. Are there situations where those of the female sex as a group have a legitimate special interest that does not include trans women?

> Are there situations where those of the female sex as a group

Obviously: medical stuff. The needs of trans women and cis women are not aligned when issues of sexual health come up. Trans women don't have uteruses, for example, and healthcare for trans women differs greatly from assigned-female-at-birth people. Here, the interests of trans women, AFAB women, trans men and AMAB men are all somewhat unique. Note further that in this situation men (specifically trans-men) and AFAB women can have significant overlaps in needs.

Do you mean more in social spaces, where women as a group are interacting as women and not as females? Because as a society we don't often differentiate between female and women's spaces, and in general we seem to apply the label "female" to many things that are really "women's".

Offhand, I can't think of many social spaces where women interact as females, and not just as women. Perhaps spaces devoted to motherhood? As for the women's spaces, those being trans exclusionary is, imo questionable in most cases. Although I did see a trans person I know recently point out that they are able to relate with trans women's experiences often more deeply than with cis women's, so the reverse would also likely be true.

As for your other question:

> I should add, I see people use the phrase "assigned male/female". Which seems odd to me if sex is a biological construct rather than a social construct. It seems the correct phrase would be "assigned man/woman". Is there something I am missing?

I agree the terminology here is weird. But implicit in your framing is that someone is assigned a gender based on their sex. One is not assigned "man/woman" at all. Or, insofar as a trans woman is AMAB, they were also assigned woman at birth (but this assignment is mental), that's why they chose to transition their appearance, to better align with their gender.

I'm not an expert, but my guess is that the "assigned" framing is a way to help distance the person from an aspect of themselves that can cause dysphoria. If you see yourself as a woman, you might strongly prefer to be biologically female, but you can't be. Framing this as something you were assigned helps to address that.

Really appreciate the thoughtful response.

> Obviously: medical stuff. The needs of trans women and cis women are not aligned when issues of sexual health come up. Trans women don't have uteruses, for example, and healthcare for trans women differs greatly from assigned-female-at-birth people. Here, the interests of trans women, AFAB women, trans men and AMAB men are all somewhat unique. Note further that in this situation men (specifically trans-men) and AFAB women can have significant overlaps in needs.

That makes sense.

> Do you mean more in social spaces, where women as a group are interacting as women and not as females? Because as a society we don't often differentiate between female and women's spaces, and in general we seem to apply the label "female" to many things that are really "women's".

> Offhand, I can't think of many social spaces where women interact as females, and not just as women. Perhaps spaces devoted to motherhood? As for the women's spaces, those being trans exclusionary is, imo questionable in most cases

A nursing mother's room does seems like it would be fairly uncontroversial. But if a majority of females would prefer to have a female only space for something else (bathroom, gym, etc.) to what extent are they obligated to accommodate trans women in including them? How do we arbitrate between those interests?

> Although I did see a trans person I know recently point out that they are able to relate with trans women's experiences often more deeply than with cis women's, so the reverse would also likely be true.

Interesting. Could it be that having spaces specifically for trans-* people might be more beneficial for social harmony and individual comfort than turning "female" spaces into "women's" spaces?

> I agree the terminology here is weird. But implicit in your framing is that someone is assigned a gender based on their sex. One is not assigned "man/woman" at all. Or, insofar as a trans woman is AMAB, they were also assigned woman at birth (but this assignment is mental), that's why they chose to transition their appearance, to better align with their gender.

I guess it depends upon who is doing the "assigning" here. My assumption is that "society" is the assigner. So far as I understand, biological sex relates to the role one is able to perform in the reproductive process, and cannot be assigned at all. Gender, being the social construct, would be something that is determined by societal norms. When assigned at birth, would be driven by the biological sex of the child.

> But if a majority of females would prefer to have a female only space for something else (bathroom, gym, etc.) to what extent are they obligated to accommodate trans women in including them? How do we arbitrate between those interests?

> Interesting. Could it be that having spaces specifically for trans-* people might be more beneficial for social harmony and individual comfort than turning "female" spaces into "women's" spaces?

These are interesting questions. So I offer only some food for thought:

What's best for "social harmony" and what is just or morally right don't always agree. Keeping schools segregated was likely best for social harmony (at least at the moment), but I think we're all better off for the US having integrated schools. Ultimately, any change for the benefit of an underrepresented group will have to start somewhere, and that first change will likely cause discord in the community.

Is having trans-only and cis-only spaces good? Maybe. Is it long term problematic? Almost assuredly. I'm not saying I have the correct answer here. I don't think anyone does (note that the trans woman I'm paraphrasing wasn't, I don't think, using this argument to say that we should have trans-only spaces, but simply that they can empathize with the connection).

I think there's plenty of evidence that racially segregated schools was best for social harmony, even in that moment. And while I think that forced segregation was wrong, I don't think it's obvious that forced integration was the best outcome. I think there's a good case to be made that free association would have resulted in a better outcome for all races.

As for the gender/sex segregation issue, I don't know I have a good answer either, though I think freedom to self-segregate would probably help us best discover a "good enough" answer.

Argh, meant to say "I think there was plenty of evidence that racially segregated schools wasn't best for social harmony, even in that moment."

I presumed as much :P

I'll offer two points, and then probably not respond much more because we're well beyond the initial discussion and while you've been very polite, we're moving further into space where things could become heated.

Forced integration was clearly not best for social harmony in the moment. It required calling in the military (not to mention things like bussing across district are costly and annoying). In general this is the issue with extending rights to minority groups: social harmony is easier to maintain if you don't upset the dominant group.

As for whether or not forced integration was the "right" thing. Consider that today de-facto segregation is still a thing, school districts are on the whole, still very racially skewed because people are skewed in where they live[0]. Where people are given choice, the privileged are unlikely to give it away, and because of how education works in the US (funding is based on property taxes, and de-facto again segregation and class differences), you can see stark differences in k-12 educational opportunities for minorities still today. Strategies to address this don't exist in many areas, or come with trouble themselves.

It's unlikely that on the whole educational opportunity would be more equal today without the temporary forced integration, unless you're valuing second order effects (like thinking that school integration "fixed" racial inequality) much more strongly than I.

[0]: And I'll ignore for now how things ended up that way, but it wasn't by accident

Thank you for the conversation!

Sex is assigned too. Most people are born with distinctly male or female genitals and just assumed to have the chromosomes and reproductive potential that usually go with them.[1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Definitions

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_assignment#History

I see the links to which you refer, but I'm not sure that makes sense. Sex is fundamentally a role that an organism plays in the process of sexual reproduction. Any organism that has the reproductive potential of a given sex then it is that sex.

Now, sex has many correlating genetic and phenotypic factors, and so if someone possesses those characteristics but is simply infertile, then we would still be correct in identifying them as being of a particular sex.

I think in the context of intersex people (at least those who are infertile) that the idea of "assigning" sex makes sense, because there is some natural ambiguity there. But just because determining a person's sex is arbitrary in some circumstances does not mean it is arbitrary in all circumstances.

I should add, I see people use the phrase "assigned male/female". Which seems odd to me if sex is a biological construct rather than a social construct. It seems the correct phrase would be "assigned man/woman". Is there something I am missing?

Yup, that's the only thing any company or person can say without causing a Twitter storm against them. By saying this they can simply avoid clarifying what they mean by this. I think all these public personalities will have a much harder time if they were asked a clearer question:

Should any man who self ids as a woman have access to women's private spaces.

I don't see a large company ever answering that in yes/no.

Maybe that's just a fad that will blow over. Nobody took that idea seriously until a few years ago. On Google Trends, peak "transgender" was in 2018. Transgenders are around 0.6% of the US population. Niche issue.

> world felons deserve redemption

What do you see in the world that leads you to this?

Edit: I mean, I think they definitely deserve redemption. I don't society doing a good job of realizing this. If you're convinced otherwise, I'd like to be presented with the ideas / experiences that convinced you, so that they have the opportunity to change my mind, as well.

> you simply can't speak on certain topics

You know... that's actually correct, I think, and actually... it's reasonable. What business is it of mine to tell you what your life was like, or who you are, or who you should be? These are things I should shut up and listen about, instead of saying anything at all.

I'm not sure if it's crafty or cowardly that the first section co-opts support by attacking Donald Trump and "right-wing demagogues".

Whatever their faults (and the historical right-wing witch-hunt parallels like McCarthyism), Trump and conservatives are not the enemies here - this modern censorship and cancel-culture trend is entirely an attack from (and problem of) the Left.

It is shameful, illiberal and will only be stopped if we are crystal clear where the blame lies.

>While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture

The "radical right" enclaves on the internet are literally the only places where you won't be banned for not falling in line.

We need to have this discussion in more than one dimension. Left/right and authoritarian/anarchist are orthogonal metrics.

I'm not sure which "radical right" enclaves you are talking about.

Donald trump and conservative groups on reddit for example are some of the most ban-heavy groups around. Where are you thinking about?

TD is not far right. 4chan is "far right". 8chan is "far right". But there are regular far left threads on chans advocating for all kinds of radicalism (including violence) as well as making legitimate talking points - no one gets banned, even though the sites primarily lean right.

The only "side" interested in actual free speech currently is the "far right", unlike left leaning forums and media outlets which explicitly censor one particular point of view, regardless of whether it is backed by legitimate science which should be open to discussion.

Censorship has undeniably become a leftist problem, if you insist on reducing the high dimensional space of political leanings to a single myopic dimension. Unbelievable that in 2020 people are shamed for going to the last places on the internet where discourse is unrestricted.

You can't in good faith make the claim that the far right is interested in actual free speech. They'd rather see people get dropped from helicopters than let those they deem to be "degenerates" voice their political opinions.

TD, /r/conservative, /r/uncensorednews [1], and all the shitholes on voat have one thing in common, they all ban pretty much anyone who goes against their narratives.

And TD was far right, not as far right as /r/uncensorednews was, but still pretty far right. But perhaps your Overton window is much further to the right than mine (and northern Europe's) is.

[1] The subreddit was banned about two years ago but had 100k+ subs and featured pretty frequent racism, anti-semitism, transphobia, and neo-nazi imagery (the head mod is a self-described neo-nazi after all).

Not my experience. Back when it was a going concern, The_Donald moderators were incredibly quick to ban anyone who was not a 100% full-throated supporter of Trump. I know because I was banned repeatedly for trying to engage in nuanced, good faith discussions. r/Conservative is extremely quick on the ban trigger as well.

I find that a desire for safe-spaces and monoculture spans both sides of the aisle and seems to be a broader trend in our culture today. Perhaps this desire always existed and the Internet's ability to cater to the long tail has simply enabled it.

There are discussion websites other than reddit...

Also calling the_donald "far right" really indicates the bias of discourse online. Which is part of the problem - people are deliberately loose with language and netizens (at least on reddit) truly believe that Nazis have taken over the Republican party...

The top post on their new site right now says that "Donald Trump is our last and only hope" and encourages readers to "VOTE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. IT DOES." I think this is an extreme viewpoint by any reasonable standard; the vast majority of people don't expect they're going to die if the wrong person wins an election.

Have you been paying attention to what BLM has been saying?

What do you expect these people to feel when they are being accused openly of white supremacy and Nazism, simply for not going along with leftist politics? That's a unilateral carte blanche to be violent. Punching Nazis is great but it's a serious problem when you are far too loose with labels, as we've been watching. Silence is violence, right?

I assure you that the millions of non-white immigrants who [reluctantly] lean towards Trump are not white supremacists - but all it takes is a single accusation to literally ruin a life. When that is the status quo, it isn't surprising to hear people say that they are voting right like "their life depends on it" because it increasingly seems to.

Regardless of the justification, you cannot deny that BLM are presently the aggressors, openly rallying to explicitly subvert US institutions. Not everyone has to agree with the culmination of the long march through the institutions.

I don't have any interest in arguing about whether their position is correct, sorry. I was just making the point that most right-wing voters don't believe such extreme things.

The words "white supremacy" are being redefined. If you don't go along with the Marxist radicals' subversion of US institutions "that are rooted in white supremacy" (not to mention their asserted goal of "ending Whiteness", the meaning of which is quite unclear to most - certainly to the many millions of people who have been heavily encouraged to self-identify as white throughout the 20th century, including by progressives) they'll call you a white supremacist.

The people downvoting you were clearly not watching the streams of protestors chanting and screaming into megaphones. The rhetoric was consistent across the country.

The premise is that the system is white supremacist in nature and must be torn down. From there it is implied that if you do not support tearing down the system, you are a white supremacist. And what do we do to white supremacists?

Except the vast majority of people who are iffy about what's going on aren't supremacists of any sort. The word "racist" is quickly losing effect.

Politics might not be 1 dimensional, but pendulums are.

> And what do we do to white supremacists?

Recent experience would say: not a whole lot. Well, maybe elect them president. You know, real scary stuff for the white supremacists.

> Except the vast majority of people who are iffy about what's going on aren't supremacists of any sort.

So is your entire complaint that, in truth, you believe in the goals that BLM has, you just are really miffed by their characterization of you as a "white supremacist", which carries too negative a connotation, and because of that you just can't bring yourself to support them?

I mean it's really easy to acknowledge that one benefits from white supremacy. I do, all the time. That doesn't inherently make me a bad person, it makes me a (white) person who lives in a society. That I happen to benefit from the same structures that put other people down, on its own, doesn't impact my moral character. What I do with that knowledge though, now that does.

What's the point of obsessing about who "benefits" from such a grossly problematic and clearly suboptimal system? Does the average white person really benefit from mass incarceration of urban minorities? One thing we can be sure of - namely that when so many people are criminalized and incarcerated, we're all being required to pay higher taxes towards the system itself.

> Does the average white person really benefit from mass incarceration of urban minorities

Have you considered why Amy Cooper called the police on a black man for making the heinous crime of asking her to leash her dog? Why there are white people calling the police on black people that did nothing wrong?

> Have you considered why Amy Cooper called the police on a black man for making the heinous crime of asking her to leash her dog?

It seems reasonable to say that Amy Cooper was being bigoted, but I'm not sure how that relates to the OP's saying that everyone who happens to self-identify as white should be doing penance for somehow "benefiting" from a grossly unfair system.

Why are you reframing what I believe: "making an effort to listen to and accept the concerns of others as legitimate" as penance? Is it penance to listen to black Americans? I certainly don't think so. If anything, it's educational.

Because mass incarceration of urban minorities is only one problem.

And there are many ways that the average white person benefits from mass incarceration: prison labor, electoral over representation, not to mention that I strive to have empathy for others.

How about we start with the blatantly racist assumption that I'm white? And the fact that such behavior is being normalized by BLM and allies, and I'm being held hostage for not going along with a movement which I believe is about to set race relations back by a hundred years?

This isn't about me. This is about the country running off a cliff. And it's the fact that I'm not even allowed to question your presumptions about how the system benefits whites at the expense of blacks - which is statistically unsupported, but that's beside my point.

Again, it's the fact that I risk being unpersoned for even bringing it up.

> How about we start with the blatantly racist assumption that I'm white?

I don't see this assumption anywhere. People of any race can be white supremacists and can benefit from white supremacy (consider for example Candace Owens).

As for the rest of your comment, I can't really address your fears. You appear to be living in a reality so different from mine, that unless you provide more explanation of how the country is running off a cliff or how black lives matter will reinstitute segregation or why you think you'll being unpersoned for... actually I can't tell what your beliefs are other than abject terror, there's not much more I can say.

Reinstituting segregation isn't some kind of secret hidden plan; many people within the Black Lives Matter movement are openly in favor of it and have achieved meaningful successes towards the goal. A dozen or so universities offer segregated dorms (albeit on an opt-in basis) today. And the California legislature just recently passed a bill to re-legalize racial discrimination.

> many people within the Black Lives Matter movement are openly in favor of it

You mean like in general, or in very specific spaces? Because while there are black separatist groups that exist, they're fringe-of-fringe.

> And the California legislature just recently passed a bill to re-legalize racial discrimination.

I think we'll agree to disagree that legalizing affirmative action policies is a setback in racial equality.

Groups that identify as "black separatist" are fringe-of-fringe, certainly. But there's little controversy about the segregated dorms I mentioned where only black people are allowed to live.

> But there's little controversy about the segregated dorms I mentioned where only black people are allowed to live.

Sure, but these have been around for quite a while (the first example I see is from 1969).

I think this speaks to an interesting impedance mismatch in terms of race-blindness vs. race awareness. There's two kinds of arguments in this vein. One, the dogwhistly kind of race-blindness that's characterized by "I don't see race" and "America hasn't been a racist nation since 1965" kinds of things. You're not making this kind of argument, and I want to be clear that you aren't, but I want to touch on it for anyone else reading, because I think there's some interesting history there about the broader "race-blindness" statement.

Interestingly, right in the shadow of the civil rights movement, race-aware policies were the norm. School bussing and forced re-integration to make sure things weren't separate were commonplace and even mandated. But we've been slowly moving in the opposite direction, with the specific issue of school desegragation seeing a reversal in 2007, where race-aware re-integration policies that tried to account for de-facto segregation were declared unconstitutional. In other words, policies crafted during the civil rights era were declared to violate the "equal protection" clause, and as a result, school districts have grown significantly more segregated since 2007. The upshot: race-aware policies aren't "new" and in fact sentiment and legality for them has drifted against, not for, them over time.

So if we start from the axioms that black American culture is unique, and that it is valuable, then we might want to protect and foster it in a college environment. If you have a minority spread across a majority group, they'll be forced to integrate in various ways. Certainly things like black student unions and culture clubs exist (and they exist for other cultures as well, as do insular dorms in some cases), but who you live around has a huge impact on the culture. We know this is true in cases beyond ethnic culture: universities have insular dorms for all kinds of things, pre-med programs, honors programs, sports programs etc. Not to mention unofficial insular communities such as marching band, where I know many students choose to live near each other at many schools. Not to mention, like, fraternities and sororities.

So if we recognize the value of a culture, and we recognize the value of an insular community in protecting that culture, the next step is to foster an insular community to protect and encourage this culture. That way it doesn't get lost, and people can learn from and about it.

So the question becomes: is separate but equal being inherently unequal, as Brown v. BoE said, the end of the story, or does equality through assimilation cause it's own kind of inequality? And if so, how do you balance those inequalities?

> resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting.

I get it. This is aimed at left-wing people who think their side can do no evil and thus proceed to censor any disagreement. But it's still funny to me that this whole thing needs to be preceded with 'the right is bad, but believe it or not, people on the left might do some bad things too', as if any side has a monopoly on virtue and goodness.

What would be the left-wing analogy to President Trump rallying against the attacks on Confederate symbols (e.g. flag ban at NASCAR, taking down of statues) and using it as a purported example of liberal hypocrisy regarding tolerance and freedom of speech?

edit: This is a genuine question, not whataboutism. The letter is obviously very keyed to the current situation, rather than just a broad defense of free expression. Many of the signatories are presumably worried that backlash to perceived unchecked movements on the left will lead to the Trump administration retaining power. The parent commenter suggests that this kind of letter would be written in a vacuum, and I disagree.

It’s a good question.

Maybe a Dem POTUS rallying against cops as they try to stop protestors from confiscating and destroying various means of production?

Maybe a closer variant would be a Democratic POTUS trying to argue that conservatives unabashed support for police justifies a greater expansion of state policing powers. But it doesn't quite feel right as an analogy because supporting police powers has generally been the status quo no matter the prevailing party. Whereas the leftist purported push to censor or bully speech doesn't feel anywhere near an entrenched status quo, even if you really think Twitter is real life.

This is a "let a hundred flowers bloom" campaign coming directly from elite media. Oldest trick in the book - be careful not to fall for it.

It is being exploited though. It's literally part of the strategy:

"The longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the Left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats." -Steve Bannon

And yet, Biden was a 'tough on crime' guy back in the 1980s and 1990s - his stances have contributed significantly to the institutional racism problem we all face today. Trump has a way better record on criminal justice reform. Don't fall for the hype. E.g. see https://www.politico.com/interactives/2020/justice-reform-bi...

> Trump has a way better record on criminal justice reform.

Yeah. For his friends.

Sure, but it was Bannon and Trump who brought that sort of thing into electoral politics. Barack Obama was constantly telling college students and "cancel culture" that they'd gone too far and needed more civic spirit and respect for others' liberties.

Do you have examples? The only one I'm aware of is this talk in 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM

That was good, but too late. It seemed like he mostly got "Ok, boomer" responses from his target.

>That was good, but too late. It seemed like he mostly got "Ok, boomer" responses from his target.

Well, Obama was a President, not a cult leader. I'm not sure he ever really believed his voters would obey him about anything.

Nonetheless, he was at least mentioning it negatively at least as far back as 2015. https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/09/president-obama-on...

Would you at least entertain the possibility that one of the sides could, at the moment, be a bit worse than the other?

Entertain? Sure. But you're also talking about "mainstream media". If we had an unbiased media outlet making this accusation, I think it might make sense. But any person center or right-of-center makes no bones about the fact that all of the major media outlets are left and getting "more lefter" all the time.

I'm not aware of anyone on the right advocating that words are acts of violence. It might be possible, but I _know_ it comes from the left.

That said, that conservatives don't speak up more about this type of stuff is concerning. They are, after all, supposed to be about the business of "conserving" things.

That said, that they even published this letter is at least a breath of fresh air. Regardless of the view, I'm glad that there is a call to examine this.

That wasn't the question. If cancer is the deadliest disease, that doesn't mean we can't talk about the obesity epidemic(or vice versa depending on the actual stats, I'm just making a general point).

Imagine if, every time someone wanted to talk about helping end the obesity epidemic, many other people chimed in about how dare you talk about obesity when cancer still exists. And the only way you could make a point about obesity is to put a disclaimer that cancer is totally worse than obesity.

One of these sides and the problem they represent just grew a huge amount in the last month. If it continues to grow at this rate, it will become the number one problem very shortly, and the time to speak out is now.

I agree that it looks funny here. But I think it's more of a strategic thing: it reveals the target audience they're addressing, and trying to show "hey, we're one of you" before saying anything more controversial that follows (that it's at all controversial is more sad than funny however).

This is a bit rich considering Harper’s has fired multiple editors over the last couple of decades because John MacArthur didn’t like their liberal views. How is that not “being cancelled”?

It's disappointing that, while they name DJT and the "radical right", they don't explicitly call out the "radical left" (it's assumed within the article, but it would be nice to call it out).

One of my favorite internet apologists has a saying that people who don't have good arguments have to resort to bad tactics, and for many people that I've had conversations with (especially among the left, but also among the right) this has often been very, very true.

While I don't support BLM/M4BL (the hashtag, not the sentence), I do think that several valid points have come up. And even though I disagree on their conclusions and sometimes their methods, it has at least caused me to think critically about how I understand the situation and what should be done about it.

I hope that the future can continue to be a place where we don't think of ideas as either "safe" or "unsafe". Any view we come across that challenges us can frighten/scare us away. Maybe it causes us to change our views, maybe it doesn't, but the introspection is valuable. I feel that's what a lot of people who want to silence debate are missing. Perhaps they don't want the introspection. Maybe they just want an echo chamber.

Regardless, let's fight for a world where ideas aren't crimes, and that people are strong/wise enough to debate and engage them in a way that makes everyone better.

> it would be nice to call it out

I think it's important to consider the primary audience here. If this were a Wikipedia article, a neutral perspective would be important, yes. But this isn't a Wikipedia article. It's a persuasion piece aimed at the members of the left, and writing from the perspective of the left (or at least not from blatantly outside that perspective) makes it more effective.

I concur. It's subtle but likely effective given the audience. :)

I agree and would go even farther. This article would be 0% effective if written in a neutral style. When you're trying to reach people stuck in an "us vs them" mentality, you have to identify yourself as "us" before you start criticizing "us". Otherwise the criticism will be seen as identifying yourself as "them" and people will start railing, not against what you're saying, but against all the other arguments associated with "them".

> ideas as either "safe" or "unsafe"

"An open mind is like a fortress with its gates left unguarded".

Thing of it is, there ARE safe and unsafe ideas (or, more commonly, safe and unsafe presentation of ideas). And it's critical thinking skills that render you capable of safely handling unsafe ideas / presentations.

You're right that the introspection is valuable, and that encountering "unsafe" ideas should lead to it; so I'm going to suggest: it's a person's attitude towards introspection that realizes the risk posed by an idea.

> who want to silence debate

IMO these people are just very badly communicating the idea "stop talking about other people's lives, and have those people speak instead" (plus layers of baggage and trauma). Halle Berry's recent controversy over a trans role is a good example of this; people talked about how she should't play the role (and some other issues), what they meant was "someone who lived this story should tell this story".

> people are strong/wise enough

Yes. Do you support massively more funding for education? Or do you see something else as a means to fight for this?

> "there ARE safe and unsafe ideas"

A nit to pick: The consequences of ideas can be safe and unsafe. The words "The police are racist" can be questioned, examined, and judged accordingly. The _result_ of the ideas and how you process them are the issue here. Gasoline is perfectly safe if left alone. But thrown in a live fire it will cause major damage.

Discarding ideas simply because others might abuse them isn't the right way to go about this.

> "someone who lived this story should tell this story"

I feel that there is a danger to this argument. It is in the same vein as what I have encountered before: a refusal to hold any sort of meaningful conversation due to an intersectional party who claims that their point is "more valid" because of lived-experience. And they would not allow anyone else to say anything because they were not <insert intersectional crossroads here>.

This promotion, if left unchecked, can mean that the person lives within an echo chamber and can be very unhealthy. They are unwilling to have other people influence them. It can be very detrimental.

> Do you support massively more funding for education?

We homeschool, so I'm not really a proponent of state-run education. However, as a parent just talking to our children and fostering good relationships with everyone around us should be a priority. I'm for the idea that this concept starts within the home and then extends out. Kids mirror what they see at home.

> nit

"What, pray tell, is an outcome? When can the consequences of an action ever be fully accounted for?" (https://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-6/page-112-2/)

> a refusal to hold any sort of meaningful conversation

Hmm. I disagree. This is how you have meaningful conversations; you speak of your own experiences, and you ask people of theirs. I don't see this happen all that often. Mostly I see people, to put it harshly for clarity, dictating to others what those others' lived experiences were. AKA, speak for yourself, not for others. If you find yourself speaking for others, pause, and turn it into a question and ask those others.

I really do mean "this is HOW". As in, if you, the person reading this, does this practice, I would expect you to have a bunch of meaningful conversations where before you might not have. That's how it's worked for me. I'd be interested in hearing experiences to the contrary.

> We homeschool

Do you support maternity/paternity leave, or other societal support for more parents having more capacity to home-school?

But you see, even if you are a member of an oppressed group, but you, as an individual don't adhere to the ideology of the day, or whose lived experience is contrary to the current narrative, what you say will be ignored or discounted. Ask Terry Crews or any Black conservative.

> Ask Terry Crews or any Black conservative.

Can you point me at something in particular so I can see clearly what it is you're talking about? I'm not doubting you, I just don't have something clear in my mind to go look at.

> what you say

A lot of the time I see this happen, what's being said is some variation of "this is the experience", "this is our experience", or "this is your experience". I generally don't see people be ignored or discounted who say some variation of "this is my experience".

When I do see people ignored or discounted who say "this is my experience", it's usually some variation of: in a conversation about a movie, one person saying "I watched the movie" and another saying "I did not watch the movie" and like duh, the second person has a very different role in the conversation than the first. And if the conversation is, say, a critical analysis, their role is "audience".

> Can you point me at something in particular

Here is the Terry Crews stuff: https://twitter.com/i/events/1277983929966813191

In Christian circles there are several people who I am aware of: Samuel Sey, Voddie Baucham, David Shannon are a couple that come to mind. Specifically Sey, because he has a blog where he publishes stuff like this: https://slowtowrite.com/does-systemic-racism-exist/

Hey also posted a blog in June 2019 that asked why America's black/white disparities are also mirrored in Canada, and asking why those same disparities exist, given the difference in history and culture: https://slowtowrite.com/our-fathers-our-failures/

He has been called a fair number of slurs from "his people": https://twitter.com/SlowToWrite/status/1049674519458312192

It's reasonable to me that these are discounted?

Terry Crews expressed a concern. A bunch of people popped up to say they didn't think the concern was present. Great! Like saying "Let's make sure the boat isn't leaking", and then people pop up and say, "yeah, the boat's not leaking".

The SlowToWrite examples are heavily based on the Bible. That's only going to be relevant for other people who also hold the Bible as a source of truth. Like saying "We don't have a problem with the sails on this boat"; that's only relevant to the other people on the same boat. I'd need to see where they're being discounted to see more, and I'd have to go look at where he's been called a slur to see what's going on there, too.

> The SlowToWrite examples are heavily based on the Bible.

Did you read any of his work? While he is a Christian, he writes using researched data as well as personal/theological insights.

Before you discount theological sources, just remember everyone as a religion—a set of beliefs that molds their actions and character. Just because you don't believe in someone's religion doesn't mean that you cannot learn from them or glean from them.

I read the first one you linked and skimmed the second.

Here's an example, and the start of what I saw:

"Therefore, under that vague and subjective reasoning, racial disparities—and especially, racial perceptions—are the basis for identifying systemic racism. That, however, presents several logical and theological problems.

Under that definition, black people—not God—are the authority on what constitutes as racism or systemic racism. This is why Voddie Baucham defines social justice ideology or systemic racism theory as ethnic Gnosticism."

Like, right off the bat, too. Of course I'm going to discount this, and it's the foundational point of the rest of what he's got to say. I'm going to discount it because, to me, what it's saying is that someone else's viewpoint is invalid, because Bible.

He does ask a bunch of reasonable questions at the end, all of which already have answers, so yeah, it's reasonable to me he's discounted. I don't see anything (in this example) that he's adding to the conversation.

So, honest question then, is there not an objective understanding of what racism is? Who gets to define what that is? Is it you? Someone else? Some scripture or holy text?

Everyone has an authority.

I mean, is there an objective understanding of hate? Of love? Of porn, of art, of dangerous speech, of democracy, or capitalism? There's objective elements, sure, but AFAIK the only things with complete objective definitions are those defined in code, as they have a complete definition that doesn't require (additional) human subjectivity. Whether those definitions are correct is an question on top of that.

Poetic indulgence aside, any understanding is going to complex (made up of multiple component concepts, which are likely to be complex themselves) and nuanced (without clean, precise English definitions). Some elements will be more objective, others more subjective. It's the world, it's messy, that's how there's things.

Yadda yadda, I suspect we'll get a more "objective" understanding as fairness research in neural nets continues (it's super cool and you should go check it out).

Isn't everyone's authority ultimately themselves? You either hold it yourself, or choose to invest it (whole cloth or piece wise) in something or someone else; either way, the first and last decision is yours.

That all said, there's pretty clearly a set of observed experiences (from slavery to George Floyd to red line districts and food deserts) and a theory to explain those observations (racism; personal, structural and systemic).

> and you ask people of theirs.

In my experience, when dealing with someone who works from an intersectional framework, this isn't something they tend to do. Maybe I've just talked to the wrong people, though. Perhaps I ought to broaden my horizons some!

> Do you support maternity/paternity leave, or other societal support for more parents having more capacity to home-school?

That would be wonderful. I am hoping that many people realize the wonders of homeschooling during the stay-at-home stuff.

> In my experience

Yeah, IME too, most people don't do this, and to be charitable, it's because they haven't realized it's a thing to do. I promote it, because at this time I really believe in this theory and method, and would very much like more people to use it.

> That would be wonderful.

I'm hearing you say "I am supportive of this" but not "I support this". For example, is this an issue that informs your voting, and what other issues take precedence (aka, are more important)?

> is this an issue that informs your voting

My views pretty much depart from the mainstream, so if you mean that is discourages me greatly when I vote, then yes.

Okay. Asking a different way.

Do you take any actions to support other people becoming more capable of homeschooling?

It's interesting to note that as of the time of me writing this comment, over half of the comments on this thread have been down-voted.

I noticed that too. Many of them seem to be downvoted for using specific viewpoints as examples.

I think having thoughts about the meta-arguments here is perfectly ok, but having strong opinions about the actual topics is not.

> The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.

Unregulated markets have had near a century of exposure and yet here we are. So I think maybe we also need reform to stop the wealthiest just buying good press coverage of ideas which they find convenient.

> Unregulated markets have had near a century

Where? Source please.

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